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 deg. 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 t