THE OVERLOOK PEA. 19: 



was not tliouglit of in a country where tliey were sure to 

 be as dirty as ever in an hour ; and so we rode on, after 

 taking a note of the spot, and, as it happened, forgetting 

 it again one of us at least. 



On again, along the green trace, which rose now to a 

 ridge, with charming glimpses of wooded hills and glens 

 to right and left; past comfortable squatters' cottages, with 

 cacao drying on sheets at the doors or under sheds ; with 

 hedges of dwarf Erythrina, dotted with red jumby beads, and 

 here and there that pretty climbing vetch, the Overlook.^ 

 I forgot, by the bye, to ask whether it is planted here, as 

 in Jamaica, to keep off the evil eye, or " overlook ;" whence 

 its name. JS'or can I guess v/liat peculiarity about the plant 

 can have first made the Xegro fix on it as a fetish. The 

 genesis of folly is as difiicult to analyse as the genesis of 

 most other things. 



All this while the dull thunder of the surf was growing 

 louder and louder; till, not as in England over a bare down, 

 but throuf^di thickest foliac^e down to the hiqh-tide mark, 

 we rode out upon the shore, and saw before us a right noble 

 sight; a flat, sandy, surf-beaten shore, along which stretched, 

 in one grand curve, lost at last in the haze of spray, 

 fourteen miles of Coco palms. 



This was the Cocal; and it was worth coming all the way 



^ Canavalia. 



