FAR AND NEAR 



ioldiers in Jamaica during the summer. The 

 military authorities kindly consented to our occupy- 

 ing a furnished cottage there called " The Refuge," 

 which at that season was not in use, — a small, 

 low, rambling cottage perched upon a shelf of the 

 mountain, its little flower garden in front full of 

 blooming roses, geraniums, and heliotrope, and sur- 

 rounded by a fringe of the ever graceful bamboo. 

 A thousand feet above us towered Katherine's 

 Peak; below us we saw the world as a soaring 

 hawk sees it, the mountains dropping down to the 

 hills, and the hills to the plain, and the plain, upon 

 which stands the city of Kingston, tilting to the 

 sea, twelve or fifteen miles distant, where we saw 

 the ships sail away into the sky, to the moon, or 

 to the evening or the morning star. How the sea 

 rises up into the horizon when viewed from a great 

 altitude ! We could not tell where the water ended 

 and the sky began. 



We had a colored man, Joseph, whom we had 

 picked up in Gordonsville, and who served us as 

 both man and maid, — quiet, willing, modest, relia- 

 ble Joseph, with broad, naked feet, greatly spread 

 at the toes, and sturdy neck capable of sustaining 

 the head, in a climb up the long, steep mountain- 

 side, with a burden of forty or fifty pounds. We 

 did not permit Joseph to do the cooking, we liked 

 that service ourselves, but he gathered the wood, — 

 mostly dry bamboo, — washed the dishes, and did 



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