CHAP, iv.] WEST INDIES. 205 



thermometer seldom rose, in the hottest part of the 

 day, above seventy. Here then was a difference of 

 ten degrees in eight miles; and in the morning and 

 evening the difference was much greater. At Cold 

 Spring, the seat of Mr. WalJen, a very high situation 

 six miles further in the country, possessed by a gen- 

 tleman who has taste to relish its beauties and im- 

 prove its productions, the general state of the ther- 

 mometer is from 55 to 65 degrees. It has been ob- 

 served so low as 42 degrees ; so that a fire there, even 

 at noon day, is not only comfortable but necessary, 

 a great part of the year. It may be supposed, that 



Cold Spring is 4,200 feet above the level of the sea. The soil is a 

 black mould on a brown marl ; but few or none of the tropical fruits will 

 flourish in so cold a climate. Neither the nesberry, the avocado pear, the 

 star apple, nor the orange, will bear within a considerable height of Mr. 

 Wallen's garden ; but many of the English fruits, as the apple, the peach, 

 and the strawberry, flourish there in great perfection, with several other 

 valuable exotics ; among which I observed a great number of very fine 

 plants of the tea-tree and other oriental productions. The ground in its 

 native state is almost entirely covered with different sorts of the/T#, of 

 which Mr. Wallen has reckoned about 400 distinct species. A person 

 visiting Cold Spring for the first time, almost conceives himself trans- 

 ported to a distant part of the world ; the air and face of the country so 

 widely differing from that of the regions he has left. Even the birds are 

 all strangers to him. Among others, peculiar to these lofty regions, is a 

 species of the swallow, the plumage of which varies in colour like the 

 neck of a drake j and there is a very fine song-bird called \htfish-eye, of 

 a blackish brown with a white ring round the neck. I visited this place 

 in December 1788, the thermometer stood at 57 degrees at sun-rise and 

 never exceeded 64 degrees in the hottest part of the day. I thought the 

 climate the most delightful that I had ever experienced. On the Blue 

 Mountain peak, which is 7,431 feet from the level of the sea, the ther- 

 mometer was found to range from 47 degrees at sun-rise to 58 degrees at 

 jvoon, even in the month of August. See Med. Comment. Eding. 1730. 



