to mud again. Through rich rolling land covered with
cane; past large sugar-works, where crop-time and all its bustle was
just beginning; along a tramway, which made an excellent horse-road,
and then along one of the new roads, which are opening up the yet
untouched riches of this island. In this district alone, thirty-six
miles of good road and thirty bridges have been made, where formerly
there were only two abominable bridle-paths. It was a solid
pleasure to see good engineering round the hillsides; gullies, which
but a year or two before were break-neck scrambles into fords often
impassable after all, bridged with baulks of incorruptible timber,
on piers sunk, to give a hold in that sea of hasty pudding, sixteen
feet below the river-bed; and side supports sunk as far into the
banks; a solid pleasure to congratulate the warden (who had joined
us) on his triumphs, and to hear how he had sought for miles around
in the hasty-pudding sea, ere he could find either gravel or stone
for road metal, and had found it after all; or how in places,
finding no stone at all, he had been forced to metal the way with
burnt clay, which, as I can testify, is an excellent substitute; or
how again he had coaxed and patted the too-comfortable natives into
being well paid for doing the very road-making which, if they had
any notion of their own interests, they would combine to do for
themselves. And so we rode on chatting,

'While all the land,
Beneath a broad and equal-blowing breeze,
Smelt of the coming summer;'

for it was winter then, and only 80 degrees in the shade, till the
road entered the virgin forest, through which it has been driven, on
the American principle of making land valuable by beginning with a
road, and expecting settlers to follow it. Some such settlers we
found, clearing right and left; among them a most satisfactory
sight; namely, more than one Coolie family, who had served their
apprenticeship, saved money, bought Government land, and set up as
yeomen; the foundation, it is to be hoped, of a class of intelligent
and civilised peasant proprietors. These men, as soon as they have
cleared as much land as their wives and children, with their help,
can keep in order, go off, usually, in gangs of ten to fifteen, to
work, in many instances, on the estates from which they originally
came. This fact practically refutes the opinion which was at first
held by some attorneys a