230 CAMPS IN THE CARIBBEES. 
the great, naked-limbed spider, that every morning 
caught a cockroach and dragged it to my head- 
board, where he spent the rest of the day in absorb- 
ing its juices. The question of convalescence seemed 
a doubtful one, until, one day, I was startled by the 
sound of a cheery voice, and my good angel burst 
into the room like a mountain breeze. 
“What ! down with fever? This won’t do; can’t 
get well here; must go down to my estate.” And he 
literally dragged me forth, assisted.me to dress, packed 
up some clothes and my gun-case, and carried me on. 
board the little steamer at the landing. At his beach 
a horse was waiting, and he placed me in the saddle 
and led the way on his own bay mare. Clinging to 
the saddle, I rode slowly up the cane-covered slopes 
to the house, perched on a spur commanding the 
valley, surrounded by bread-fruit and almond trees. 
There I was taken in charge by my friend’s good wife, 
and established at the house until fully recovered. 
“Rutland Vale,” to which my friend had carried 
me, is a long, narrow valley, extending from the 
Caribbean Sea to the mountains, nearly two miles. 
The estate occupies the whole of this valley, and is 
the best cultivated of any on the Leeward coast, 
being, in the season at which I visited it, one waving 
mass of cane, filling the valley and covering the bil- 
lowy ridges. : 
The memory of those sunny days, in which my 
strength came back to me, is the pleasantest, the 
brightest, of the many delightful reminiscences of 
that lovely island. My good host, James Milne, a 
native of Bamff, in Scotland (celebrated as the home 
of Tam Edward, the “Scottish naturalist”), had 
