t we were correct, for we went along the track
to the river, so as to make sure of this being the one we sought--for
being lost in these wilds was something not to be thought of for a
minute. There, though, on the other side of the stream, was the
landing-place from which we had started, only to reach our present
position after a roundabout eventful journey.

"All right, Mas'r Harry--come along," said Tom, turning.

And now, pursuing the track, we found that we were gradually mounting a
slope, till the trees were left behind and we stood upon an eminence
looking down upon my uncle's house.

All that we had seen beautiful before seemed to fail before the picture
upon which we now gazed, where all that was lavish in nature had been
aided by the hand of man, cultivation subduing and enriching, till the
region below us blushed in beauty; for we were looking down upon a
lightly-built, pleasantly-shaded house, with its green jalousie-covered
windows, and great creeper-burdened verandah, gaily-painted, and running
right round the house.

The place stood in the midst of a grove of verdure of the most glorious
golden-green, rich with the great crimson, coral-like blossoms of what
is there called _madre del cacao_--the cocoa's mother--tall, regularly
planted trees, cultivated for the protection and shade they give to the
plants beneath, great bananas loaded with fruit, bright green coffee
bushes, and the cocoa with its pods, green, yellow, blood-red, and
purple. The roughly erected fences were, so to speak, smothered with
glorious trumpet-blossomed convolvuli, whose bright hues were peering
ever from a bed of heart and spear shaped richly green leaves.

CHAPTER TWELVE.

THE HACIENDA.

Clear and bright was the sky, and wherever the rays of the sun
penetrated it was for them to fall in a shower of golden arrows, and
form tracery upon the green carpet beneath the trees, amid whose
branches, screaming, chattering, climbing, and hanging head downwards,
or fluttering from bough to bough, were hundreds of rainbow-hued
parrots, beautiful as Nature's dyes could paint.

It was a scene of exceeding beauty, and was not lost even upon blunt,
hungry Tom.

"Well," he exclaimed, "if this don't pay for coming out, may I never
again wire out a bar of best mottled. It's a rum sort of country
though; one time frightening you to death, and the next minute coaxing
you into staying. S'pose, Mas'r Harry, that there's a sort of foreign