EASTWARD HO! 75 
curing house, about 50 ft. below the house terrace, and drop 
lightly, if possible on the high road, another fall of about 30 
ft. Poor Harris jibbed, so G. A. F., who stands about 6ft. 2 in. 
in his socks, made a dive for him with a hand like that of 
Providence, and sad to say, Harris “took bush.” 
We left about noon and drove through the long, strag- 
gling Manzanilla village for a little over two miles, when 
coming over the rise of a hill, the cool strong breeze and roar 
of the surf warned us of our proximity to the beach. A few 
more seconds and there we were in full view of the Atlantic, 
a most refreshing sight, particularly to a denizen of the 
tropics. On the left the Manzanilla shipping place or depét, 
where the produce of the district is collected to be shipped 
on the R. M.S. coastal steamer every week, and the mouth of 
the Lebranche River, a great resort of the famous mullet 
that goes by that name. Beyond the river, Manzanilla 
Point runs out about a mile into the sea, having at its ex- 
treme end several half-submerged rocks called the Carpen- 
ters, which have been responsible for several shipwrecks, 
amongst them as the legend goes, the establishment of the 
Cocal, a vessel loaded with coco-nuts from the Orient, being 
driven on the Carpenters and totally wrecked, the cargo of 
coco-nuts gradually drifted ashore, where Mother Earth 
took them to her bosom and generously nourished them, so 
that they formed the advance guard of the present fine prop- 
erty called the Cocal, a stretch of near fourteen miles from 
the Manzanilla Road to the Ortoire. All cultivations have 
more or less their attractive features, and, although that of 
the coco-nut does not aspire to the generosity of colour and 
lush vegetation of a cocoa estate, yet it has its own peculiar 
charm, more especially at the Cocal, where the foam-capped 
breakers with their everlasting roar seem to be perpetually 
gibing the slow work of Nature and her workers, saying, 
“Come, hustle up now, see what a hurry we are in and always 
at work. Take a lesson from us, we are the only exponents 
of perpetual motion’’; while just outside the high-water 
mark are the groves of coco-nut palms, quiet and still as the 
Temple of Silence, with the pale amber light that is caused 
by the combined reflective action of sun, palm, and sand. 
