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Page 57
After having been detained in town several days longer than I had
reckoned on, by heavy rains, which ran through the streets in rivers,
and filled the bed of Sandy Gully, through which we must pass, with a
rushing torrent of irresistible strength, a small party of us left
Kingston one morning for the mountains of St. Andrew and Metcalfe, among
which lie the stations of the American missionaries whom we had come to
join. We were mounted on the small horses of the country, whose first
appearance excited some doubts in the mind of a friend whether he was to
carry the horse or the horse him. However, they are not quite ponies,
and their blood is more noble than their size, being a good deal of it
Arab. They are decidedly preferable for mountain travel to larger
animals.
We directed our course over the hot plains towards the mountains which
rose invitingly before us, ready to receive us into their green depths.
On leaving the town, we passed first through sandy lanes bordered by
cactus hedges, rising in columnar rows, and then came out upon the
excellent macadamized road over which thirteen of the sixteen miles of
our journey lay. As we went along we met a continual succession of
groups of the country people, mostly women and children, coming into
Kingston with their weekly load of provisions to sell. They eyed us with
expressions varying from good-natured cordiality to sullenness, and
occasionally we heard a rude remark at the expense of the 'Buckras;' but
for the most part their demeanor was civil and pleasant. Most of them
had the headloads without which a negro woman seems hardly complete in
the road, varying in dimensions from a huge basket of yams or bananas to
an ounce vial. How such a slight thing manages to keep its perpendicular
with their careless, swinging gait, is something marvellous, but they
manage it to perfection. Almost every group, in addition, had a
well-laden donkey--comical little creatures, looking hardly bigger under
their huge hampers than well-sized Newfoundland dogs, and hurrying
nimbly along, with a speed that betokened a wholesome remembrance of a
good many hard thrashings in the past and a reasonable dread of similar
ones in the future. If I held the doctrine of transmigration, I should
be firmly persuaded that the souls of parish beadles, drunken captains,
and other petty tyrants, shifted quarters into the bodies of Jamaica
negroes' donkeys. One patriotic black woman, whose donkey was rather
refractory, relieved her mind by exclaiming, in a tone of infinite
disgust, 'O-h-h you Roo-shan!' accompanying her objurgation by several
emphatic demonstrations on his hide of how she was disposed to treat a
'Rooshan' at that present moment.[8]
Going on, we passed several beautiful 'pens,' as farms devoted to
grazing are called. These near town are little more than mere pieces of
land surrounding elegant villas, the residence of wealthy gentlemen
whose business lies in Kingston. Here you see 'the one-storied house of
the tropics, with its green jalousies and deep veranda,' surrounded by
handsomely kept meadows of the succulent Guinea grass, which clothes so
large a part of the island with its golden green, and enclosed by wire
fences or by the intricate but delicate logwood hedges, or else by stone
walls. On either side of the carriage road which swept round before the
most elegant of these villas, that of Mr. Porteous, we noticed rows of
the mystic century plant.
At last we left the comparatively arid plain, with its scantier
vegetation, and began to ascend Stony Hill, which is 1,360 feet high
where the road passes over it. The cool air passing through the gap, and
our increasing elevation, now began to temper the heat, and soon the
clouds began to gather again, and a slight rain fell. But I did not
notice it, for every step of the journey now seemed to bring me farther
into the heart of fairyland. It was not any variety of colors, but the
unutterable depth of green, enclosing us, as we ascended, more and more
completely in its boundless exuberance. From that moment the richest
verdure of my native country has seemed pale and poor. Reaching the top
of the hill, we saw above us the higher range, looking down on us
through the shifting mists, with that inexpressible gracefulness which
tempers the grandeur of tropical mountains.
We descended the hill on the other side into a small inland valley,
containing the two estates of Golden Spring and Temple Hall. The
former, which presented nothing very noticeable then, has since passed
under the management of a gentleman who to a judicious and energetic
personal oversight has added a kindliness and strict honesty in his
dealings with the laborers much more desirable than frequent in the
island. As a result of this, Golden Spring has become a garden. A great
many more dilapidated estates would become gardens under the same
efficacious mode of treatment.
The streams were so swollen by the rain that on coming to what is
commonly a trifling rivulet, we found it so high as to cost us some
trouble to cross. However, we all got over, although one servant boy
with his pack horse was caught by the current and carried down several
rods almost into the river, which was rushing by in a turbid torrent. I
ought to have been much alarmed, but having a happy way, in new
circumstances, of taking it for granted that everything which happens is
just what ought to happen then and there, I stood composedly on the
farther bank, nothing doubting that the boy and the beast had their own
good reasons for striking out a new track, and it was not till they were
both safe on land that I learned with some consternation that they had
come within an inch of being drowned.
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