FAR AND NEAR 



upon the cattle and other Hve-stock. One could see 

 them on the under, less hairy parts of the cows, 

 looking like large warts. We often saw a large black 

 bird, the kling-kling, perched on the backs of the 

 cattle, making a meal off these gorged ticks. One 

 day one of our party made an excursion of a few rods 

 into the bush, and returned with his coat skirts brow^n 

 with these dust-like torments. Some colored girls 

 who chanced to be passing came to our aid, and 

 helped whip the ticks off with a certain leafy shrub 

 that they said was death to them. No, you can- 

 not make love to Nature in the tropics as you can in 

 our zone. Bew^are how you embrace her. She is a 

 lousy beggar, a stinging reptile, a brazen wanton, or 

 a barbaric princess, — just as you happen to find her. 

 Ah, me ! even at her best she has not the constancy, 

 the tenderness, the self-forgetfulness, of the Nature 

 of more temperate climes. I must make one excep- 

 tion: these Jamaican streams and rivers, beautiful 

 with the beauty of the purest mountain brooks, have 

 nothing suggestive of the tropics about them ; one's 

 heart goes out to them at once. Theirs are the 

 clear, shining faces of old friends, of many a trout 

 camp in the Catskills and Adirondack w^oods. 

 Limpid and pure as melted snow, no sediment, no 

 earth stain, the pebbles and boulders with which they 

 are paved are washed and scoured as if yesterday 

 had been a day of purification with them ; they lack 

 only the coolness of our very best mountain streams. 



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