MOUNTAIN PROSPECT. 141 



Other ; scorpions, and centipedes, and red spiders, are 

 far too rarely seen, unless searched for, to be any 

 objects of dread ; and even the petty insect annoy- 

 ances, which commonly make the woods rather in- 

 tolerable, are wanting here. You may sit for hours 

 without having your clothes and your hair full of 

 little stinging ants, or without disturbing a city of 

 those formidable warriors, the great-jawed Corro- 

 mantee Ants (Odontomachus) ; and even the Mus- 

 quitoes, except on rare occasions, are so little 

 troublesome, as to be scarcely more worth minding 

 th^n the gnats in England in an autumnal evening. 



" Hic ver assiduum, atque alienis mensibus ffistas. 

 At rabidae tigres absunt, et saeva leonura 

 Semina; nee miseros fallunt aconita legentes ; 

 Nee raplt immensos orbes per humum, neque tanto 

 Squameus in spirara tractu se coUigit anguis." 



ViRG. Georg. ii. 149. 



Above this secluded road on the seaward side, 

 shutting out the view in that direction, except in 

 little peeps here and there through the valleys, — rise 

 the peaks of the ridge. Up the highest of these I 

 climbed, with no small toil, one day in March, and 

 stood on the loftiest point in the western part of 

 Jamaica. I was well rewarded for the difficulty and 

 labour of the steep ascent, by the extensive prospect. 

 I counted six ranges of mountains to the eastward, 

 each beyond the other, besides Bluefields Ridge, on 

 which I stood ; the most distant of which was in all 

 probability that of the Manchester Mountains, near 

 the centre of the island. A few insects commemorated 

 my visit : Passalus interstitialis, a curious flattened 



