fee. I would give the whole process by which an amber-colored
stream, of perfect flavor, might be poured out, without a trace of
sediment, to the very last drop, did I not reflect with pity that
probably in all the wide extent of my country there is neither the
apparatus of grinding nor the sable domestic with skill to use it. Nay,
even in Jamaica, where one would think they could afford to be slow
_for_ a good thing, since they are so amazingly slow _to_ every good
thing, I grieve to say that the barbarous mill, hacking and mangling the
fragrant berry, has almost universally supplanted the more laborious
ancient method by which it was gently reduced to its most perfect
attrition, yielding up every particle of its aromatic strength. Thus the
modern demon of expedition, to whom quickness is so much more than
quality, has invaded even the slumberous repose of our fair island,
bringing under his arm, not a locomotive, but a coffee mill. There are,
to be sure, two or three locomotives on the twelve-mile railway between
Kingston and Spanishtown, but it would be a cruel sarcasm to intimate
that the genius of expedition ever brought them.

There are several other vegetable products of Jamaica, which it owes
likewise to a happy accident. The mango, for instance, which now grows
in such profusion on uplands and plains, that if the groves should be
cut down, the face of the country would seem naked, was a spoil of war,
being brought from a French ship destined for Martinique, somewhere
about 1790. At first it is said the mangoes sold for a guinea a piece,
with the express stipulation that the seed should be returned. Now, in a
good bearing season, I have actually seen a narrow mountain road fetlock
deep with decaying mangoes, besides the thousands consumed by man and
beast. During the summer, in the good years, they furnish the main
subsistence to the negro children, and a large part of the subsistence
of the adults, and make a grateful and wholesome change from the yam and
salt fish which constitute the staples of their diet the rest of the
time. It is this, probably, which has given rise to the absurd report
that the negroes live principally on fruits spontaneously growing.

The young leaves of the mango are of a brownish red; and amid the
general profusion of green, they impart a not ungrateful relief to the
eye. Even their russet blossoms have a pleasant look. But in a good
season, when the fruit is ripe, the groves have a ma