JAMAICA.

For persons who have never visited the tropics to form an idea of the
exceeding beauty of night in these regions, is utterly impossible. The
azure depth of the sky, illuminated by numberless stars of wondrous
brilliancy, seems, as it were, reflected in the giant foliage of the
trees, and on the dewy herbage of the mountainsides, gemmed with the
scintillations of innumerable fire-flies; while the gentle night-wind,
rustling through the lofty plantain and feathery cocoa-nut, bears upon
its breath a world of rich and balmy odours. Perhaps the scene is
still more lovely when the pale moon flings down her rays on the
chalice of the _Datura arborea_, brimming with nectareous dew--her own
most favoured flower, delicate of scent and chaste in beauty. Yet the
night of the tropics has many drawbacks: noxious, unsightly creatures
then forsake their lair, lithe snakes uncoil their glossy rings, bats
flutter in the moonbeams, and croaking frogs disturb the silence of
the hour.

In a valley of the St Andrew Mountains, in the island of Jamaica,
where we resided for a short time, we beheld in perfection this lovely
night, and experienced in an equally great degree its inconveniences.
It was indeed a favoured spot, for which nature had done her utmost.
Sublime and beautiful were there so exquisitely blended, that to
determine the leading characteristic of the scenery was impossible.
Mountains, clad to the loftiest summit in perpetual verdure; gigantic
trees, rich in blushing fruits; pensile plants, aglow with the
choicest flowers; proud-rifted rocks, pale and ghastly, as if cleft by
an earthquake; foaming cascades springing madly down the cliffs,
leaping through chasms spanned with aquatic creepers, and then
dwindling into ever-gurgling streams, that glided through ravines
curtained with verdant drapery--such were some of the details of the
picture; but how vain the endeavour to describe this redundant beauty!
A friend, who enjoyed it with a zest as keen as our own, once
remarked: 'It is like nothing in this world but one of Salvator Rosa's
pictures framed in a garland of flowers!'

This gorgeous scenery screened from our dwelling the unsightly squalor
of a negro village, which lay at a distance of a mile and a half on
the other side of an abrupt hill to our rear. It consisted merely of
some score of huts, of miserable aspect, formed of matting, stretched
on stakes stuck in the ground; and in other cases, of interwoven
b