MOUNTAIN PROSPECT. 
141 
other ; scorpions, and centipedes, and red spiders, are 
far too rarely seen, unless searched for, to be any 
objects of dread; and even the petty insect annoy- 
ances, which commonly make the woods rather in- 
tolerable, are wanting here. You may sit for hours 
without having your clothes and your hair full of 
little stinging ants, or without disturbing a city of 
those formidable warriors, the great-jawed Corro- 
mantee Ants ( Odontomachus ) ; and even the Mus- 
quitoes, except on rare occasions, are so little 
troublesome, as to be scarcely more worth minding 
than the gnats in England in an autumnal evening. 
“ Hie ver assiduum, atque alienis mensibus aestas. 
At rabidae tigres absunt, et saeva leonum 
Semina; nec miseros fallunt aconita legentes ; 
Nec rapit immensos orbes per humum, neque tanto 
Squameus in spiram tractu se colligit anguis.” 
ViRG. Georg, ii. 149. 
Above this secluded road on the seaward side, 
shutting out the view in that direction, except in 
little peeps here and there through the valleys, — rise 
the peaks of the ridge. Up the highest of these I 
climbed, with no small toil, one day in March, and 
stood on the loftiest point in the western part of 
Jamaica. I was well rewarded for the difficulty and 
labour of the steep ascent, by the extensive prospect. 
I counted six ranges of mountains to the eastward, 
each beyond the other, besides Bluefields Ridge, on 
which I stood ; the most distant of which was in all 
probability that of the Manchester Mountains, near 
the centre of the island. A few insects commemorated 
my visit : Passalus inter stitialis, a curious flattened 
