ANDACOLLO — LIMA — PANAMA — JAMAICA. 1 5 7 



has been remarked, appear not to possess tlie sense of 

 feeling. For a trivial offence a negro will take a small 

 child, his own, and will get two stout boys to stretch him 

 by his hands and feet round a sugar barrel, while he him- 

 self beats the poor wretch with all his might with a vine 

 stick. As for mules and other animals, they appear to 

 think that they were created expressly to be tortured. 

 The insolence of the negroes in the towns is such that 

 anyone who has ever visited Jamaica cannot fail to have 

 observed it. In this respect the inhabitants of the 

 interior parts of the country are far better — a fact notice- 

 able all over the West Indies and South America. 



The scenery of Jamaica is lovely ; in fact, I never was 

 in such a beautiful land. It is far superior, in my idea, 

 to purely tropical scenery, such as that at Ecuador and the 

 Amazon, which is of such a rank and luxuriant character 

 that one can rarely get a good idea of the whole ; a 

 few yards limits one^s vision ; whereas in Jamaica there is 

 sujSicient luxuriance of vegetation, without that excess 

 which only spoils the effect. The general character of 

 the scenery is much the same, and I shall proceed to 

 describe two excursions which I took, which are 

 generally supposed to be the prettiest and most charac- 

 teristic in the island. On the day after my arrival, I 

 hired a horse from White's livery stables to take me to 

 Newcastle, the quarters of the English troops, about 

 twenty miles off. I don't wish Mr. White any harm, 

 but I am not quite sure, even to this day, whether the 

 animal he gave me was a horse or some species of camel. 

 It resemble,d more than anything else I can compare it 

 to, a large coffin edge upwards, supported on four legs, 

 and with a head and neck fixed on somehow. For the 

 privilege of riding him to Bolton's, where the ascent 



