FAR AND NEAR 



son. The most novel scene I witnessed at Ewarton 

 was that of two old negroes next morning pounding 

 coffee in big mortar-like vessels made out of the 

 trunks of trees. They used a heavy club, and punched 

 and punched and stirred the green coffee to loosen 

 the chaff or skins from the berry, keeping up in the 

 mean time a wild, plaintive chant to wliich their 

 pounding was timed. They were grizzled and old, 

 and the scene was curious and interesting. Yes, and I 

 recall a famishing dog, scarcely more than a walking 

 skeleton, going about the street licking the ground 

 where a little flour had been spilt. 



From Ewarton our course took us over wooded 

 hills and mountains, with here and there a rude 

 clearing, to Chapelton in the valley of the Rio 

 Minho, a distance of about twenty-five miles. My 

 son and Mr. Kellogg, to work off some of their super- 

 fluous American energy, walked the whole distance, 

 fording the Rio Minho a half-dozen or more times in 

 the course of the afternoon. I stuck to the carriage, 

 walking only when I got tired of riding. Bridges are 

 few over these rapid Jamaican streams, but fording 

 them at this season was a trifling matter. On many 

 of the smaller streams, in lieu of a bridge, a wall is 

 built across and the space above it filled in with 

 gravel, resulting in a wide, shallow sheet of water 

 through which carts and pedestrians pass easily, — 

 a new device in road-making to our eyes. 



I walked several hours up the valley of the Rio 



232 



