when he pleased or when he could; he slept when and where sleep
overtook him. If his table was not always spread, his bed was always
ready at the foot of some tree in the open forest. And in other
respects Torres was not difficult to please. He had traveled during
most of the morning, and having already eaten a little, he began to
feel the want of a snooze. Two or three hours' rest would, he
thought, put him in a state to continue his road, and so he laid
himself down on the grass as comfortably as he could, and waited for
sleep beneath the ironwood-tree.

Torres was not one of those people who drop off to sleep without
certain preliminaries. HE was in the habit of drinking a drop or two
of strong liquor, and of then smoking a pipe; the spirits, he said,
overexcited the brain, and the tobacco smoke agreeably mingled with
the general haziness of his reverie.

Torres commenced, then, by applying to his lips a flask which he
carried at his side; it contained the liquor generally known under
the name of _"chica"_ in Peru, and more particularly under that of
_"caysuma"_ in the Upper Amazon, to which fermented distillation of
the root of the sweet manioc the captain had added a good dose of
_"tafia"_ or native rum.

When Torres had drunk a little of this mixture he shook the flask,
and discovered, not without regret, that it was nearly empty.

"Must get some more," he said very quietly.

Then taking out a short wooden pipe, he filled it with the coarse and
bitter tobacco of Brazil, of which the leaves belong to that old