THE BOCAGUA. 303 



Soon after sunrise we began to return, "but not 

 before I had taken many bulbs of a Pancratium with 

 ovate leaves growing near the house where we had 

 slept. It was not in flower; but the blossom was 

 said to be fragrant. We returned by a different route, 

 skirting the summits of the Liguanea mountains, and 

 passing through smiling plantations, in order to de- 

 scend into the romantic parish of St. Thomas in the 

 Vale. After a while, we crossed and recrossed, many 

 times, the winding Rio D'Oro, and at length entered 

 the magnificent gorge called the Bog-walk (i. e. 

 Bocagua, a sluice), through which runs the Cobre, 

 formed by the union of the Negro and the D'Oro. 

 The road lay for four miles through this deep gorge^ 

 by the side of the river, and afforded at every turn 

 fresh scenes of surpassing wildness, grandeur, and 

 beauty. The rock often rose to a great height on 

 each side, leaving only room for the rushing stream, 

 which seemed to have cleft its course, and the narrow 

 pathway at its side. Sometimes, across the river, the 

 side of the ravine receded in the form of a very steep 

 but sloping mountain, covered with a forest of large 

 timber, and so clear of underwood, that the eye could 

 peer far up into its gloomy recesses. Here and there 

 the course of the river was dammed up by islets ; 

 some of them mere masses of dark rock, others 

 adorned with the elegant waving plumes of the grace- 

 ful Bamboo. But the most remarkable object was 

 the immense rock called Gibraltar, which rises on the 

 opposite bank of the river, from the water's edge, 

 absolutely perpendicular, to the height of five or six 

 hundred feet : a broad mass of limestone, twice as 



