ither of these she promised that she would make me happy,
and I do not doubt that she would have succeeded, for her fame had
spread through all Jamaica, and her face was as merry as it was honest.
As it turned out I was provided for elsewhere, and I lost the chance of
making an acquaintance which I should have valued. When she spoke to me
she seemed a very model of vigour and health. She died suddenly while I
was in the island.

The day was still early. When the vessel was in some order again, and
those who were going on shore had disappeared, the rest of us were
called down to breakfast to taste some of those Jamaica delicacies on
which Paul Gelid was so eloquent. The fruit was the chief attraction:
pineapples, of which one can eat as much as one likes in these countries
with immunity from after suffering; oranges, more excellent than even
those of Grenada and Dominica; shaddocks, admirable as that memorable
one which seduced Adam; and for the first time mangoes, the famous
Number Eleven of which I had heard such high report, and was now to
taste. The English gardeners can do much, but they cannot ripen a Number
Eleven, and it is too delicate to bear carriage. It must be eaten in the
tropics or nowhere. The mango is the size and shape of a swan's egg, of
a ruddy yellow colour when ripe, and in flavour like an exceptionally
good apricot, with a very slight intimation of resin. The stone is
disproportionately large. The flesh adheres to it, and one abandons as
hopeless the attempt to eat mangoes with clean lips and fingers. The
epicures insist that they should be eaten only in a bath.

The heat was considerable, and the feast of fruit was the more welcome.
Soon after the Colonial Secretary politely answered my note in person.
In the absence of the governor of a colony, the colonial secretary, as
a rule, takes his place. In Jamaica, and wherever we have a garrison,
the commander of the forces becomes acting governor; I suppose because
it is not convenient to place an officer of high military rank under the
orders of a civilian who is not the direct representative of the
sovereign. In the gentleman who now called on me I found an old
acquaintance whom I had known as a boy many years ago. He told me that,
if I had made no other arrangements, Colonel J----, who was the present
chief, was expecting me to be his guest at the 'King's House' during my
stay in Jamaica. My reluctance to trespass on the hospitality of an
entire st