80 BLUEFIELDS. 



cut in the woods, and brought in every evening. No 

 place is better off in this respect than Bluefields ; a 

 rivulet of the most cool and sparkling water running, 

 with many meanderings, through its whole extent. 

 In truth it is a romantic little stream. Here it dilates 

 into broad but shallow pools ; there, confined between 

 narrow banks, it rushes like an arrow in a black and 

 deep rapid; now it brawls among the rolling pebbles ; 

 then it pours foaming over a succession of round 

 terraced rocks ; and anon falls in a sheet over a little 

 precipice, a Niagara in miniature. Here the ground 

 is on a level with the water, and the brook flows be- 

 neath clumps of feathery bamboos, and luscious- 

 fruited guava-trees : there the banks rise to high and 

 steep walls, clothed with grass to the water's edge, 

 where they are fringed with a luxuriant border of 

 vegetation springing out of the stream. The broad, 

 peltate leaves of the Cowfoot [Piper umhellatum), and 

 those of the still broader Calalue (a species of Cala- 

 dium), overshadow the water beneath ; while among 

 them peeps forth a lovely white blossom, resembling 

 a star at the extremity of a long and slender tube. 

 This, notwithstanding its treacherous beauty, is one 

 of the most venomous of plants [Isotoma longijlora), 

 commonly called Horse-poison, from its fetal eiFects 

 on those animals, if they chance to eat it ; causing 

 their bodies to swell until they actually burst : even 

 the juice of the leaves will raise bladders on the 

 skin. 



After having passed under a one-arched bridge, 

 the rivulet is divided by a little islet, tenanted only, 

 as far as I know, by a pair of Petcharies [Tijrannus 



