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Page 58
At length we turned aside into a byroad leading up a steep hill,
slippery with mud, and left this pleasant valley. I passed through it
many a time afterwards, and never lost the impression of its peaceful
richness.
We now found ourselves in the wild country in which our missionary
stations lie. Hills rose around on every side; their surfaces broken and
furrowed into every fantastic variety of shape, with only distance
enough between their bases for the mountain streams to flow. In our
latitude such a country would be much of the time a bleak desolation.
But here the mantle of glorious and everlasting green softens and
enriches the broken and fluctuating surfaces into luxuriant and cloying
beauty. In such an ocean of verdure we now found ourselves, its emerald
waves rolling above, below, and around us. Our road, when once we had
surmounted the short hill, was a narrow, winding bridle path, which kept
along almost upon a level over a continual succession of natural
causeways, spanning the gullies with such an appearance of art as I have
never seen elsewhere. I afterward learned that these are dikes of trap,
from which the softer rock has been gradually disintegrated, leaving
them thus happily arranged for human convenience.
After three miles' travel over these roads of nature's making, in a rain
which at last became quite uncomfortable, we came finally to Oberlin
Mission House. A West Indian country house, without fire or carpets,
must be very pleasingly fitted up not to look dreary in a wet day, and
Oberlin House appeared rather cheerless as we alighted with streaming
garments, the romance pretty well soaked out of us for the time. But
after supper and a change of clothes, and the clearing away of the
clouds, our dismal spirits cleared up too, and we went out into the
garden to enjoy the rare flowers and plants--the crimson-leaved
ponsetto, the Bleeding Heart, with its ensanguined centre, the curiously
pied and twisted Croton Pictum, the Plumbago, well named from the leaden
hue of its flowers, the long, deep-red leaves of the Dragon's Blood, the
purple magnificence of the Passion flower, relieved by the more familiar
beauty of the Four o'clock and of the Martinique rose. Seeing something
that pleased me, I stepped forward to view it more narrowly, when a
sudden access of acute pain in one foot, quickly spreading to the knee,
admonished me that I had got into mischief in the shape of an ant's
nest, and gave me the first instalment of a lesson I learned in due time
very thoroughly, that the beauties of Jamaica are to be enjoyed with a
very cautious regard to the paramount rights of the insect creation.
When I went to bed, I found the bedclothes saturated with dampness. But
I learned that it was like a Newport fog, too saline to be mischievous.
The atmosphere of the island, even in the brightest and most elastic
weather, is so impregnated with moisture, that a Leyden jar will lose
its charge in being taken across the room, and an electrical machine
will not work without a pan of coals under the cylinder. But as no part
of the island is more than twenty-five miles from the sea, this
continual moisture appears to be quite innocuous, its worst effect being
the musty smell which it causes in everything in the mountains, where
there is the most rain. Use fortunately takes from us the perception of
this, or it would be quite intolerable. Perpetual summer, and the utmost
glory of earth, sky, and sea, are not to be enjoyed without drawbacks
that would make a careful housekeeper very doubtful about the
desirableness of the exchange. And so ended my first day in the country.
CHAPTER IV.
GEOGRAPHICAL SKETCH OF THE ISLAND
I had intended writing some of my first impressions about Jamaica,
particularly its negro population. But I find, on reviewing my residence
of five years and a half in the tranquil island, that first impressions
melt so imperceptibly into final conclusions, that it appears best not
to attempt a too formal separation of them. Before recounting the
results of my own experience, however, in any form, it will not be amiss
to attempt some general description of the island and of its population,
and to give a slight sketch of its history.
The parallel of 18� N lat. passes through the island of Jamaica, which
has thus a true tropical climate. It is 160 miles in length and 40 in
average breadth, having thus a plane area of 6,400 square miles, being
about equal to the united area of Connecticut and Rhode Island. Although
the third in size of the Greater Antilles, it comes at a great remove
after Hayti, the second, being not more than one-fourth as large. Nor
does it compare in fertility with either Hayti or Cuba. The former
island is the centre of geological upheaval, and the great rounded
masses, sustaining a soil of inexhaustible depth, run off from thence
splintering into sharp ridges, which in Jamaica become veritable knife
edges, sustaining a soil comparatively thin. The character of the island
is that of a mountain mass, which, as the ancient watermark on the
northern coast shows, has at some remote period been tilted over, and
has shot out an immense amount of detritus on its southern side, forming
thus the plains which extend along a good part of that coast, varying in
breadth from ten to twenty miles, besides the alluvial peninsula of
Vere. In the interior, also, there is an upland basin of considerable
extent, looking like the dry bed of a former lake, which now forms the
chief part of the parish of St. Thomas-in-the-Vale. The mountain mass
which makes the body of the island, running in various ranges through
its whole length, culminates in the eastern part of it in the Blue
Mountains, whose principal summit, the Blue Mountain Peak, is 7,500 feet
high. It is said that Columbus, wishing to give Queen Isabella an
impression of the appearance of these, took a sheet of tissue paper, and
crumpling it up in his hand, threw it on a table, exclaiming, 'There!
such is their appearance.' The device used by the great discoverer to
convey to the mind of the royal Mother of America some image of her
new-found realms, forcibly recurs to the mind of the traveller as he
sails along the southeastern coast, and notices the strange contortions
of the mountain surfaces. But seen from the northern shore, at a greater
distance, through the purple haze which envelops them, their outlines
leave a different impression. I shall always remember their aspect of
graceful sublimity, as seen from Golden Vale, in Portland, and of
massive sweetness, as seen from Hermitage House, in the parish of St.
George. The gray buttresses of their farthest western peak, itself over
5,000 feet in height, rose in full view of a station where I long
resided, and the region covered by their lower spurs, ranging in
elevation from seven to ten and twelve hundred feet, is that which
especially deserves the name of the 'well-watered land,' or, as it is
poetically rendered, the 'isle of springs,' of which Jamaica, or perhaps
more exactly Xaymaca, is the Indian equivalent. There you meet in most
abundance with those crystal rivulets, every few hundred yards threading
the road, and going to swell the wider streams which every mile or two
cross the traveller's way, laving his horse's sides with refreshing
coolness, as they hurry on in their tortuous course from the mountain
heights to the sea. Farther west the mountains and hills assume gentler
and more rounded forms, particularly in the parish of St. Anne, the
Garden of Jamaica. I regret that I know only by report the scenes of
Eden-like loveliness of this delightful parish. It is principally
devoted to grazing, and its pastures are maintained in a park-like
perfection. Grassy eminences, crowned with woods, and covered with herds
of horses and the handsome Jamaica cattle, descend, in successive
undulations, to the sea. Over these, from the deck of a vessel a few
miles out, may be seen falling the silver threads of many cascades.
Excellent roads traverse the parish, which is inhabited by a gentry in
easy circumstances, and by a contented and thriving yeomanry. St. Anne
appears to be truly a Christian Arcadia.
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