FAR AND NEAR 



distant, in the last century a large sugar plantation, 

 now a banana and cocoanut plantation owned by 

 the United Fruit Company. The little railway con- 

 nected the plantation with the steamer. Train-loads 

 of bananas and cocoanuts were brought in to the 

 steamers daily. Golden Grove is a large, oval, fertile 

 plain, threaded by the limpid Gardner River and 

 surrounded by an amphitheatre of hills and moun- 

 tains. Most of the large, solid, whitewashed build- 

 ings of the old sugar plantation were still standing; 

 some of them with the high-arched bridge were very 

 picturesque. Here we saw many East Indian coolies, 



— a slight, slender, sooty-faced race, the women often 

 in rags, with silver bands on their ankles and wrists. 

 Here, too, we saw a large herd of East Indian oxen, 



— wide-horned, high-shouldered, dewlapped crea- 

 tures, with a wonderful look of dignity and repose. 

 A coolie woman, stripped to the waist, w^as washing 

 her clothes in the river near the ruins of the old 

 mill, while her little girl of ten or twelve was bathing 

 in the pool near by. It was a pretty picture, and my 

 son determined to get a photograph of it. When 

 the woman saw what he was about she was very 

 indignant and voluble, but she was too late; the 

 camera winks quickly. A few pennies would have 

 made her a willing subject. 



For some reason, before I went to Jamaica I had 

 thought of the banana as growing upon a tree, but 

 here it was growing upon a kind of huge cornstalk, 



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