92 
A EIDE TO CONTENT. 
of Bluefields, may yet be seen the luxuriant beauty 
of the majestic Sugar-cane, the busy scenes of in- 
dustry of which it is the subject, and all the varied 
processes by which it is converted into sugar and 
rum. The hum of many voices, the cheerful song, 
the merry horse-laugh, the shrill notes of the women 
and children, with the creaking of ungreased wheels, — 
all tell pleasantly of industry and happiness, in a 
country where certainly a stranger is apt to be pain- 
fully struck with the prevalence of silence and neglect, 
and of that sort of decay which consists in the too 
successful efforts of wild nature to reconquer from 
man the possessions which he had once wrested from 
her sway. 
At length the quiet smiling valley of Peter’s Vale, 
and the busy laughing one of Grand Vale, are both at 
our back, and we enter the Cotta-wood, a dense but 
low coppice, and begin to ascend, by a narrow path, 
the steep mountain-side. The rock projects in many 
parts in huge tabular shelves, forming rude steps, 
up and down which it is terrific to ride, though I 
have done both, trusting to the surefootedness of the 
horses bred in the mountains, which are used to these 
precipitous paths. Long, tough, spinous stems trail 
in every direction through these woods, tangling them 
beyond all description, and making it a most laborious 
and painful task to penetrate them. Birds abound in 
them, especially various species of terrestrial Pigeons, 
the White- belly, the Partridge, and the Ground- 
Dove ; and many fine and curious insects, I have 
exclusively found here. At length we suddenly 
break through the bushes, and find ourselves on a 
