2'24 CUBA AND PORTO RICO 



The best view of Jamaican life is obtained by driving 

 through the country. Comfortable two-horse barouches 

 can be hired for a pound a day in Kingston, and a cour- 

 teous negro serves as guide and driver. Travel on the 

 beautiful highways is a pleasure. The roads have a 

 perfect surface; the gutters are well trimmed; neatly 

 painted posts mark each quarter-mile; the grades, care- 

 fully surveyed, are such that the lofty heights are climbed 

 without serious effort on the part of the horses ; and every 

 mile traversed presents some beautiful and pleasing picture 

 to the eye. Sometimes these roads follow the side of 

 picturesque streams like the Bog Walk and "Wag Water; 

 again, they rise over the high central divides, presenting 

 remarkable panoramas of landscape, sometimes wild and 

 rugged, again broken by beautiful pastoral and agricultural 

 scenes. If one prefers, he can drive entirely around the 

 island along the sea-shore, everywhere in sight of the sea, 

 here presenting a great variety of color, pearl-green above 

 the growing reef, or deepest blue where some oceanic abyss 

 closely borders the shore, and always accompanied by a 

 beautiful breaking surf dashing against the rock or dying 

 upon beaches of snow-white sand. Miles of cocoa-palms 

 shade the road, while on the land side one meets constant 

 surprises as he passes around some headland. Here a 

 great sugar-plantation borders the road, with its quaint 

 old buildings and immense overshot water-wheels ; around 

 the next headland is a picturesque village with its parish 

 church and market-place ; or the road for miles follows 

 overhanging bluffs veiled with exquisite vegetation. Not 

 the least charming features of such a drive are the people 

 whom one passes. Everywhere the erect figures of the 

 negro women can be seen walking ahead so rapidly that our 

 trotting horses hardly overtake them, each carrying upon 

 her head some burden a basket, tray, bundle, or vessel, a 

 prayer-book, a handkerchief, or, if naught else, a round 

 stone to hold down her hat. 



The Jamaican woman thinks nothing of walking twenty 



