FAR AND NEAR 



of one of the trees with the nest of the Httle blue 

 quit upon it. The nest was made of dry grasses, and 

 was shaped hke a small crook-necked gourd; the 

 neck hooked over the limb so that the entrance to 

 it was on one side of the branch and the body of it 

 below the other side. It was very pretty, and I 

 carried it in the carriage for two days hoping to 

 bring it home with me, but it finally got hopelessly 

 crushed. 



We saw no cultivation of the soil to speak of till 

 we reached a large sugar plantation in Judas Vale, 

 — one of the few large sugar estates that are still 

 worked in the island, — called Worthy Park, cover- 

 ing a large, oval, sunken valley several miles across. 

 Here were rich level bottoms covered w ith the green, 

 corn-like sugar-cane, and here sugar-making and 

 rum-making were being carried on by swarms of 

 negroes, in a large old mill with a huge overshot 

 water-wheel. It all smacked of the picturesque, 

 patriarchal, wasteful times. Things were done on 

 a large scale, but awkwardly, cumbrously: a vast 

 herd of oxen and mules to do the hauling, — six or 

 eight yoke of the former hitched to a huge, heavy 

 dray or wagon hauling sugar-cane and driven wildly 

 by as many men, with much running and yelling; 

 bushers and overseers of high and low degree; the 

 planter himself, a tj^ical colonial Englishman, 

 born on the island, — florid, burly, positive, out- 

 spoken, authoritative, dissatisfied, but hospitable 



£36 



