66 



merited with bright green woods of bamboo, log- 

 wood, prickly-yellow, broad-leaf, and trumpet trees; 

 and so completely covered with the most lively 

 verdure, that once, when we found a piece of barren 

 rock, Cubina pointed it out to me as a curiosity; — 

 " Look, massa, rock quite naked !" The cotton- 

 tree presented itself on all sides ; but as this is the 

 season for its shedding its leaves, its wide-spreading 

 bare white arms contributed nothing to the beauty 

 of the scene, except where the wild % and various 

 creeping plants had completely mantled the stems 

 and branches ; and then its gigantic height, and 

 the fantastic wreathings of its limbs, from which 

 numberless green withes and strings of wild flowers 

 were streaming, rendered it exactly the very tree 

 for which a landscape-painter would have wished. 

 The air, too, was delicious ; the fragrance of the 

 Sweet- wood, and of several other scented trees, but 

 above all, of the delicious Logwood (of which most 

 of the fences in Westmoreland are made) composed 

 an atmosphere, such, that if Satan, after promising 

 them " a buxom air, embalmed with odours," had 

 transported Sin and Death thither, the charming 

 couple must have acknowledged their papa's pro- 

 mises fulfilled. 



We travelled these first ten miles (Montego Bay 

 being about thirty from my estate of Cornwall) 

 without seeing a human creature, nor, indeed, 

 any thing that had life in it, except a black snake 

 basking in the sunshine, and a few John Crows 



