THE COTTAGE. 
93 
good broad road, that leads from Black River to 
Hampstead and over the Luana-mountains; and here, 
just round a corner of the zigzag line, is perched 
the little cottage of Content. 
Why this situation was chosen for the house, I can 
hardly imagine, unless the wide-extended prospect 
afforded the inducement, or else the contiguity to the 
high road. The thin stratum of sloping earth, that 
originally supported the forest-trees, has been quite 
cleared from a small area, leaving only the naked 
furrowed rock, which has partly been built up with 
masonry on the lower side, to form a site sufficiently 
level for the harhican, on which the coffee, pimento, 
&c. are dried in the sun. Yet a few hundred 
yards within the forest, on the same plantation, a 
spacious and fertile level dale exists, which would 
seem to have offered a spot far more eligible for 
habitation. 
Above, below, and around, is the primeval forest, 
scarcely interrupted by the small and widely scattered 
clearings that here and there occur. From so singular 
a position, — the tops of the trees immediately be- 
neath the little space that surrounds the dwelling 
scarcely reaching to the level of its base, — the eye 
commands a magnificent prospect, embracing the 
indented coast from the bold promontory of Pedro 
Bluff on the east as far as the park-like slopes of 
Mount Edgecumbe on the west ; ranging over the 
sombre intervening forest, with its cultivated open- 
ings, and resting on the broad savannahs and flooded 
meadows that surround Black River ; this town with 
its bay and shipping in the distance, and the course 
