80 
BLUEFIELDS. 
cut in the woods, and brought in every evening. No 
place is better off in this respect than Bluefields ; a 
rivulet of the most cool and sparkling water running, 
with many meanderings, through its whole extent. 
In truth it is a romantic little stream. Here it dilates 
into broad but shallow pools ; there, confined between 
narrow banks, it rushes like an arrow in a black and 
deep rapid; now it brawls among the rolling pebbles ; 
then it pours foaming over a succession of round 
terraced rocks ; and anon falls in a sheet over a little 
precipice, a Niagara in miniature. Here the ground 
is on a level with the water, and the brook flows be- 
neath clumps of feathery bamboos, and luscious- 
fruited guava-trees : there the banks rise to high and 
steep walls, clothed with grass to the water’s edge, 
where they are fringed with a luxuriant border of 
vegetation springing out of the stream. The broad, 
peltate leaves of the Cowfoot {Piper umbellatum), and 
those of the still broader Calalue (a species of Cala- 
dium), overshadow the water beneath ; while among 
them peeps forth a lovely white blossom, resembling 
a star at the extremity of a long and slender tube. 
This, notwithstanding its treacherous beauty, is one 
of the most venomous of plants {Isotoma longiflord)^ 
commonly called Horse-poison, from its fatal effects 
on those animals, if they chance to eat it ; causing 
their bodies to swell until they actually burst : even 
the juice of the leaves will raise bladders on the 
skin. 
After having passed under a one-arched bridge, 
the rivulet is divided by a little islet, tenanted only, 
as far as I know, by a pair of Petcharies {Tyr annus 
