A LOST FEBRUARY 



this extreme sensitiveness to it ? I could not find out. 

 I noticed that the falling rain did not cause it to 

 shut up. It took it about seven or eight minutes to 

 open its leaves again, which it did very slowly. The 

 plant belongs to the leguminous family. Indeed, 

 Jamaica is a wonderful country for pods and beans. 

 You see pod-bearing trees and bushes everpvhere, 

 and pick up on the seacoast huge black beans that 

 look like some rare polished stones. One day we 

 passed dense masses of low trees in bloom by the 

 roadside ; they looked like our honey-locust, except 

 that the blossoms were yellow. 



On this day we passed through a dry section of 

 the country, where water was scarce ; and nearly 

 every colored boy or woman that we met carried a 

 long stick of sugar-cane. This was for drink. We 

 persuaded one boy to part with his six or eight feet 

 of cane, and thereafter for many miles three trav« 

 elers might have been seen eagerly gnawing at the 

 end of a section of the sweet, succulent stalk, and 

 chewing it with an air of placid content. The juice 

 slaked the thirst and was pleasant to the taste. By 

 attending closely to business, one could extract the 

 moisture just about fast enough to meet the hourly 

 wants of the system ; so that the gnawing and suck- 

 ing could go on indefinitely, or as long as the cane 



held out. 



By the roadside my son made an excursion into 

 a grove of wild oranges, and brought back a branch 



235 



