Url Tilt: NOIiTHERN MOUNTAINS. 



palm-leaves, aiul we sitting on logs among the strange un- 

 gainly ]\lontric'liar(lias, drinking " Ivamoniie " out of bamboo, 

 and washing it down with milk from green coco-nuts 

 was this, too, a scene in a pantomime? AVould it, too 

 vanish if one only shut one's eyes and shook one's head ? 



We turned up into the loveliest green trace, where, I know 

 not how, the mountain vegetation had, some of it, come 

 down to the sea-level. Nowhere did I see the ]\Ielastomas. 

 more luxuriant ; and among them, arching over our lieads 

 like parasols of green lace, between us and the sky, were 

 tall tree-ferns, as fine as those on the mountain-slopes. 



In front of us opened a flat meadow of a few acres ; and 

 beyond it, spur upon spur, rose a noble mountain, in so steep 

 a wall that it w^as difficult to see how we were to ascend. 



Ere we got to the mountain foot, some of our party 

 had nigh come to grief. For across the Savanna wandered 

 a deep lagoon-brook. The only bridge had been w^ashed 

 aw^ay by rains ; and w^e had to get the horses through as we 

 could, all but swimming them, two men on each horse ; and 

 then to drive the poor creatures back for a fresh double load, 

 Avith fallings^ splashings, much laughter, and a qualm or two 

 at the recollection that there might be unpleasant animals in 

 the water. Electric eels, happily, were not invented at the 

 time wdien Trinidad parted from the Main, or at least had 

 not spread so far east : but alligators had been by that time 



