FAR AND NEAR 



upon the cattle and other Kve-stock. One could see 

 them on the under, less hairy parts of the cows, 

 looking like large warts. We often saw a large black 

 bird, the kling-kling, perched on the backs of the 

 cattle, making a meal off these gorged ticks. One 

 day one of our party made an excursion of a few rods 

 into the bush, and returned with his coat skirts brown 

 with these dust-like torments. Some colored girls 

 who chanced to be passing came to our aid, and 

 helped whip the ticks off with a certain leafy shrub 

 that they said was death to them. No, you can- 

 not make love to Nature in the tropics as you can in 

 our zone. Beware how you embrace her. She is a 

 lousy beggar, a stinging reptile, a brazen wanton, or 

 a barbaric princess, — just as you happen to find her. 

 Ah, me ! even at her best she has not the constancy, 

 the tenderness, the self-forgetfulness, of the Nature 

 of more temperate climes. I must make one excep- 

 tion: these Jamaican streams and rivers, beautiful 

 with the beauty of the purest mountain brooks, have 

 nothing suggestive of the tropics about them ; one's 

 heart goes out to them at once. Theirs are the 

 clear, shining faces of old friends, of many a trout 

 camp in the Catskills and Adirondack woods. 

 Limpid and pure as melted snow, no sediment, no 

 earth stain, the pebbles and boulders with which they 

 are paved are washed and scoured as if yesterday 

 had been a day of purification with them ; they lack 

 only the coolness of our very best mountain streams. 

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