ilted over, and
has shot out an immense amount of detritus on its southern side, forming
thus the plains which extend along a good part of that coast, varying in
breadth from ten to twenty miles, besides the alluvial peninsula of
Vere. In the interior, also, there is an upland basin of considerable
extent, looking like the dry bed of a former lake, which now forms the
chief part of the parish of St. Thomas-in-the-Vale. The mountain mass
which makes the body of the island, running in various ranges through
its whole length, culminates in the eastern part of it in the Blue
Mountains, whose principal summit, the Blue Mountain Peak, is 7,500 feet
high. It is said that Columbus, wishing to give Queen Isabella an
impression of the appearance of these, took a sheet of tissue paper, and
crumpling it up in his hand, threw it on a table, exclaiming, 'There!
such is their appearance.' The device used by the great discoverer to
convey to the mind of the royal Mother of America some image of her
new-found realms, forcibly recurs to the mind of the traveller as he
sails along the southeastern coast, and notices the strange contortions
of the mountain surfaces. But seen from the northern shore, at a greater
distance, through the purple haze which envelops them, their outlines
leave a different impression. I shall always remember their aspect of
graceful sublimity, as seen from Golden Vale, in Portland, and of
massive sweetness, as seen from Hermitage House, in the parish of St.
George. The gray buttresses of their farthest western peak, itself over
5,000 feet in height, rose in full view of a station where I long
resided, and the region covered by their lower spurs, ranging in
elevation from seven to ten and twelve hundred feet, is that which
especially deserves the name of the 'well-watered land,' or, as it is
poetically rendered, the 'isle of springs,' of which Jamaica, or perhaps
more exactly Xaymaca, is the Indian equivalent. There you meet in most
abundance with those crystal rivulets, every few hundred yards threading
the road, and going to swell the wider streams which every mile or two
cross the traveller's way, laving his horse's sides with refreshing
coolness, as they hurry on in their tortuous course from the mountain
heights to the sea. Farther west the mountains and hills assume gentler
and more rounded forms, particularly in the parish of St. Anne, the
Garden of Jamaica. I regret that I know only by report the scenes of
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