GKAND VALE ESTATE. 
91 
Bamboo-walk cutting a conspicuous zigzag line upon 
its dark mass. The ride through this beautiful na- 
tural amphitheatre, which extends for three or four 
miles, is for the most part over the short soft turf of 
expanded pastures, which sustain hundreds of cattle, 
and are studded with many noble and useful trees. 
Among these the Star-apple [ChrysojpJiyllum cainito) 
is especially worthy of notice ; the golden tint of the 
under surface of its leaves, moved with the breeze, 
perpetually interchanging with the deep glossy green 
of their upper sides. 
Such open pastures as these, intermingled with 
fields where the valuable, always verdant. Guinea- 
grass grows in thick tussocks, are the favourite resorts 
of the Tichicro, a prettily-marked ground sparrow, 
who calls ‘‘ tichicro ! chi-chi-tichicro ” in a loud tone 
from his grassy cover, or sits on a large stone and 
warbles forth a pretty melody, as the traveller is 
passing. Among the orange and pimento trees, the 
Wild Canary hops and twitters ; a colony of imported 
strangers, it is said, which have lost in song, what 
they have gained in richness of colouring. Thousands 
of little Teriades and Polyommati (minute yellow 
and blue Butterflies) with white Pierides and tawny 
Danaides, flit over the pasture in the bright sun, 
paying perpetual homage to the blossoms of Asclc'pias^ 
Argemone, Stachytarpha^ Cassia, and many other 
weeds that spring up amidst the pasture grasses. 
To this beautiful estate succeeds another very 
similar in character, but more uneven in surface, 
called Grand Vale. It is still cultivated as a sugar 
estate ; and here only, within a circuit of many miles 
