urn Tilt: cocAL. 



though far less delicate than, tlie famous lace-bark of the La- 

 getta-tree, peculiar, I Lelieve, to one district in the Jamaica 

 mountains. And as it is elastic and easily stretched, wliat 

 hinders the brown child from pulling it out till it makes an 

 admirable fool's-cap, some two feet high, and exactly the 

 colour of his own skin, and dancing about therein, the fat 

 oily little Cupidon, without a particle of clothing beside ? 

 And what wonder if we growm-up wdiites made fools' 

 caps too, for children on the other side of the Atlantic? 

 During which process w^e found w^hat all said they had 

 never seen before that one of the spadices carried 

 two caps, one inside the other, and one exactly like the 

 tjther ; a w^anton superfluity of Nature, which I should 

 like to hear explained by some morphologist. 



We rode away from that hospitable group of huts, whither 

 we were to return in two or three days ; and along tlie green 



trace once more. As w^e rode, M the civilizer of 



Montserrat and I side by side, talking of Cuba, and staring 

 at the iSToranteas overhead, a dull sound w^as heard, as if 

 the earth had opened ; as indeed it had, engulfing in the 



mud the whole forehand of M 's mule; and there he 



knelt, his beard outspread upon the clay, while the mule's 

 visage looked patiently out from under his left arm. How- 

 ever, it was soft falling there. The mule was hauled out 

 by main force. As for cleaning either her or the rider, that 



