's cave, and would have borne a fairer name. The
light is bluish-green, like a glowworm's, but immeasurably brighter; and
we could trace them far away glancing like spirits over the meadows.

I could not wonder that my new friends had been charmed with the place.
The air was exquisitely pure; the temperature ten degrees below that of
Kingston, never oppressively hot and never cold; the forest scenery as
beautiful as at Arden; and Miss Roy's provision for us, rooms, beds,
breakfasts, dinners, absolutely without fault. If ever there was an
inspired coffee maker, Miss Roy was that person. The glory of Mandeville
is in its oranges. The worst orange I ate in Jamaica was better than the
best I ever ate in Europe, and the best oranges of Jamaica are the
oranges of Mandeville. New York has found out their merits. One
gentleman alone sent twenty thousand boxes to New York last year,
clearing a dollar on each box; and this, as I said just now, when Nature
is left to produce what she pleases, and art has not begun to help her.
Fortunes larger than were ever made by sugar wait for any man, and the
blessings of the world along with it, who will set himself to work at
orange growing with skill and science in a place where heat will not
wither the trees, nor frosts, as in Florida, bite off the blossoms.
Yellow fever was never heard of there, nor any dangerous epidemic, nor
snake nor other poisonous reptile. The droughts which parch the lowlands
are unknown, for an even rain falls all the year and the soil is always
moist. I inquired with wonder why the unfortunate soldiers who were
perched among the crags at Newcastle were not at Mandeville instead. I
was told that water was the difficulty; that there was no river or
running stream there, and that it had to be drawn from wells or
collected into cisterns. One must applaud the caution which the
authorities have at last displayed; but cattle thrive at Mandeville, and
sheep, and black men and women in luxuriant abundance. One would like to
know that the general who sold the Newcastle estate to the Government
was not the same person who was allowed to report as to the capabilities
of a spot which, to the common observer, would seem as perfectly adapted
for the purpose as the other is detestable.

A few English families were scattered about the neighbourhood, among
whom I made a passing acquaintance. They had a lawn-tennis club in the
village, which met once a week; they drove in with their