KILMARNOCK FOREST. 123 



with clumps of bamboos; and these verdant, plumose 

 crowns, expanding their arched heads like gigantic 

 tufts of ostrich feathers against the briUiant sky, 

 finish the picture. 



After travelling some miles through an open 

 country, we entered the forest at Kilmarnock, where 

 some new provision gardens had recently been re- 

 claimed and planted. The grace and luxuriance of 

 the yam-festoons, and other cultivated plants already 

 shooting up, nearly concealed the hideousness of the 

 blackened stumps that thickly studded the ground. 

 Here I saw Brasavola nodosa in full flower, the spikes 

 of white blossom large and massy ; and from a huge 

 fallen tree by the side of the road, I obtained many 

 bulbs of a species of Maxillaria. The woods were 

 now high and dense, and presented much of the same 

 character as those on the Bluefields Ridge. Pre- 

 sently we began to descend, and soon opened the 

 beautiful sugar estate of Grand Vale, with its bright 

 green cane-fields and pastures spread out below us as 

 on a map. The mill-house with its curious conical 

 roof; the boiling and trash-houses, and other offices; 

 and, at a little distance, the " great house," beside a 

 beautiful sheet of water ; all could be traced from 

 our elevated position ; while the groups of busy 

 labourers, the teams of working oxen, and the 

 pasturing cattle, moved about like ants over the sun- 

 lit scene. The dark forest bounded the estate on 

 every side, heightening by its sombre contrast the 

 cheerfulness of the variegated inclosure ; and beyond 

 this stretched away the boundless sea, sleeping in 

 silvery beauty beneath the noontide sun. 



