48 XAPARIMA. 



" niud-volcano," near Monkey Town, in the forest to the 

 south-east. The cross-roads were deep in mud, all the worse 

 because it was beginning to dry on the surface, forming u 

 tough crust above the hasty-j^udding which, if broken 

 through, held the horse's leg suspended as in a vice, and 

 would have thrown him down, if it were possible to throw 

 down a West-Indian horse. We passed in one place a quaint 

 little relic of the older world ; a small sugar-press, rather 

 than mill, under a roof of palm-leaf, which was worked by 

 hand, or a donkey, just as a Spanish settler would have 

 worked it three hundred years ago. Then on through plenty 

 of garden cultivation, with all the people at their doors as we 

 passed, fat and grinning : then up to a good high-road, and 

 a school for C3olies, kept by a Presbyterian clergyman, Mr. 

 Morton I mast be allowed to mention his name who, like 

 a sensible man, wore a white coat instead of the absurd ve^m- 

 lation black one, too macli affected bv all well-to-do folk, lav 

 as well as clerical, in the West Indies. The school seemed 

 good enough in all Avays. A senior class of young men 

 including one who had had his head nearly cut off last year by 

 misapplication of that formidable weapon the cutlass, wdiich 

 every coloured man and w^oman carries in the AVest Indies 

 could read pretty well ; and tlie smaller children with as 

 much clothing on as they could be persuaded to w^ear were 

 a sight pleasant to see. Among them, by the bye, w^as a 



