188 CUBA AND POltTO ItICO 



than that of these mountains. It equals that of Tyrol, 

 but is entirely different in detail, as ean be seen in the 

 ascent of Blue Mountain Peak. With increasing altitude 

 panorama after panorama of tropical landscape unfolds 

 in rapid succession. At Gordontown, nine miles north of 

 Kingston, where the interior margin of the Liguanea plain 

 abruptly meets the mountain front, the ascent begins 

 through the red-colored cliffs of the Hope River canon, 

 which here, at an altitude of nine hundred feet, debouches 

 into the gravel plain. A thousand feet above us, the white 

 buildings of Newcastle Barracks look like doves upon a 

 housetop ; yet later we climb so far above them that they 

 seem like toy houses below. At two thousand feet the 

 plain of Liguanea, upon which Kingston is built, with its 

 neighboring villages and shipping, grows smaller and 

 smaller, and finally appears like a diminutive plaza below 

 us. Sometimes our path clings to the mountain-side, with 

 an apparently endless slope above and a bottomless chasm 

 below. Again, it follows a knife-edge, from which we can 

 see beyond, on both sides of the island, the waters of the 

 Caribbean, so distant and so far below that no horizon 

 can be distinguished where the gray of the sea meets that 

 of the sky. Great ocean steamers plying their way look 

 like minnows basking on the surface of a lake. Still 

 higher we look down upon the forest-covered summits 

 of the limestone plateau, which appears below as an 

 unbroken meadow, its rugged hills and canons seemingly 

 obliterated. 



Each step of the way is marked by wonders of the 

 vegetal kingdom. At the foot is the semiarid south- 

 coast chaparral, with exogenous banana-plants, cocoanut- 

 trees, native cactus, and acacias. Ascending Hope River 

 canon, the delicate deciduous flora of the island, is first 

 met. Vast trees of the forest, draped with tillandsia, 

 mantle the slopes, while the cliffs are burdened with 

 begonia and ferns, golden, silver, and delicate maiden- 

 hair, besides many little flowers which find foothold 



