amp Seguine {249b}--which last is an Arum
with a knotted stem, from three to twelve feet high. We brushed our
way along with our cutlasses, as we sat on our saddles, enjoying the
cool shade; till my companion's mule found herself jammed tight in
scrub, and unable to forge either ahead or astern. Her rider was
jammed too, and unable to get off; and the two had to be cut out of
the bush by fair hewing, amid much laughter, while the wise old
mule, as the cutlasses flashed close to her nose, never moved a
muscle, perfectly well aware of what had happened, and how she was
to be got out of the scrape, as she had been probably fifty times
before.

We stopped at the end of the long beach, thoroughly tired and
hungry, for we had been on the march many hours; and discovered for
the first time that we had nothing left to eat. Luckily, a certain
little pot of 'Ramornie' essence of soup was recollected and brought
out. The kettle was boiling in five minutes, and half a teaspoonful
per man of the essence put on a knife's point, and stirred with a
cutlass, to the astonishment of the grinning and unbelieving
Negroes, who were told that we were going to make Obeah soup, and
were more than half of that opinion themselves. Meanwhile, I saw
the wise mule led up into the bush; and, on asking its owner why,
was told that she was to be fed--on what, I could not see. But,
much to my amusement, he cut down a quantity of the young leaves of
the Cocorite palm; and she began to eat them greedily, as did my
police-horse. And, when the bamboo stoups were brought out, and
three-quarters of a pint of good soup was served round--not
forgetting the Negroes, one of whom, after sucking it down, rubbed
his stomach, and declared, with a grin, that it was very good Obeah-
-the oddness of the scene came over me. The blazing beach, the
misty mountains, the hot trade-wind, the fantastic leaves overhead,
the black limbs and faces, the horses eating palm-leaves, and we
sitting on logs among the strange ungainly Montrichardias, drinking
'Ramornie' out of bamboo, washing it down with milk from green
coconuts--was this, too, a scene in a pantomime? Would it, too,
vanish if one only shut one's eyes and shook one's head?

We turned up into the loveliest green trace, where, I know not how,
the mountain vegetation had, some of it, come down to the sea-level.
Nowhere did I see the Melastomas more luxuriant; and among them,