FAR AND NEAR 



distant, in the last century a large sugar plantation, 

 now a banana and cocoanut plantation owned by 

 the United Fruit Company. The Httle railway con- 

 nected the plantation with the steamer. Train-loads 

 of bananas and cocoanuts were brought in to the 

 steamers daily. Golden Grove is a large, oval, fertile 

 plain, threaded by the Kmpid Gardner River and 

 surrounded by an amphitheatre of hills and moun- 

 tains. Most of the large, soUd, whitewashed build- 

 ings of the old sugar plantation were still standing; 

 some of them with the high-arched bridge were very 

 picturesque. Here we saw many East Indian cooHes, 



— a shght, slender, sooty-faced race, the women often 

 in rags, with silver bands on their ankles and wrists. 

 Here, too, we saw a large herd of East Indian oxen, 



— wide-homed, high-shouldered, dewlapped crea- 

 tures, with a wonderful look of dignity and repose. 

 A coolie woman, stripped to the waist, was washing 

 her clothes in the river near the ruins of the old 

 mill, while her little girl of ten or twelve was bathing 

 in the pool near by. It was a pretty picture, and my 

 son determined to get a photograph of it. When 

 the woman saw what he was about she was very 

 indignant and voluble, but she was too late; the 

 camera winks quickly. A few pennies would have 

 made her a wilHng subject. 



For some reason, before I went to Jamaica I had 

 thought of the banana as growing upon a tree, but 

 here it was growing upon a kind of huge cornstalk, 

 272 



