One knew what that meant; and,
with a sigh, resigned oneself to a four or five miles' mountain walk
at the end of a long day, and started up the steep zigzag, through
cacao groves, past the loveliest gardens--I recollect in one an
agave in flower, nigh thirty feet high, its spike all primrose and
golden yellow in the fading sunlight--then up into rastrajo; and
then into high wood, and a world of ferns--tree ferns, climbing
ferns, and all other ferns which ever delighted the eye in an
English hothouse. For along these northern slopes, sheltered from
the sun for the greater part of the year, and for ever watered by
the steam of the trade-wind, ferns are far more luxuriant and varied
than in any other part of the island.

Soon it grew dark, and we strode on up hill and down dale, at one
time for a mile or more through burnt forest, with its ghastly
spider-work of leafless decaying branches and creepers against the
moonlit sky--a sad sight: but music enough we had to cheer us on
our way. We did not hear the howl of a monkey, nor the yell of a
tiger-cat, common enough on the mountains which lay in front of us;
but of harping, fiddling, humming, drumming, croaking, clacking,
snoring, screaming, hooting, from cicadas, toads, birds, and what
not, there was a concert at every step, which made the glens ring
again, as the Brocken might ring on a Walpurgis-night.

At last, pausing on the top of a hill, we could hear voices on the
opposite side of the glen. Shouts and 'cooeys' soon brought us to
the party which were awaiting us. We hurried joyfully down a steep
hillside, across a shallow ford, and then up another hillside--this
time with care, for the felled logs and brushwood lay all about a
path full of stumps, and we needed a guide to show us our way in the
moonlight up to the hospitable house above. And a right hospitable
house it was. Its owner, a French gentleman of ancient Irish
family--whose ancestors probably had gone to France as one of the
valiant 'Irish Brigade'; whose children may have emigrated thence to
St. Domingo, and their children or grandchildren again to Trinidad--
had prepared for us in the wilderness a right sumptuous feast: 'nor
did any soul lack aught of the equal banquet.'

We went to bed; or, rather, I did. For here, as elsewhere before
and after, I was compelled, by the courtesy of the Governor, to
occupy the one bed of the house, as being the oldest, least