Accordingly early on the following morning we set off; two carriages full of us; Mr. M----, a new friend lately made, but I hope long to be preserved, on the box of his four-in-hand. The road was as good as all roads are in Jamaica and Barbadoes, and more cannot be said in their favour. Forest trees made a roof over our heads as we climbed to the crest of the ridge. Thence we descended the side of a long valley, a stream running below us which gradually grew into a river. We passed through all varieties of cultivation. On the high ground there was a large sugar plantation, worked by coolies, the first whom I had seen in Jamaica. In the alluvial meadows on the river-side were tobacco fields, cleanly and carefully kept, belonging to my Spanish friend in Kingston, and only too rich in leaves. There were sago too, and ginger, and tamarinds, and cocoa, and coffee, and cocoa-nut palms. On the hill-sides were the garden farms of the blacks, which were something to see and remember. They receive from the Government at an almost nominal quit rent an acre or two of uncleared forest. To this as the first step they set light; at twenty different spots we saw their fires blazing. To clear an acre they waste the timber on half a dozen or a dozen. They plant their yams and sweet potatoes among the ashes and grow crops there till the soil is exhausted. Then they move on to another, which they treat with the same recklessness, leaving the first to go back to scrub. Since the Chinaman burnt his house to roast his pig, such waste was never seen. The male proprietors were lounging about smoking. Their wives, as it was market day, were tramping into Kingston with their baskets on their head. We met them literally in thousands, all merry and light-hearted, their little ones with little baskets trudging at their side. Of the lords of the creation we saw, perhaps, one to each hundred women, and he would be riding on mule or donkey, pipe in mouth and carrying nothing. He would be generally sulky too, while the ladies, young and old, had all a civil word for us and curtsied under their loads. Decidedly if there is to be a black constitution I would give the votes only to the women.
We reached Castleton at last. It was in a hot damp valley, said to be a nest of yellow fever. The gardens slightly disappointed me; my expectations had been too much raised by Trinidad. There were lovely flowers of course, and curious plants and trees. Every known palm is growing there. They try hard to grow roses, and they say that they succeed. The roses were not in flower, and I could not judge. Bye the familiar names were all there, and others which were not familiar, the newest importations called after the great ladies of the day. I saw one labelled Mabel Morrison. To find the daughter of an ancient college friend and contemporary giving name to a plant in the New World makes one feel dreadfully old; but I expected to find, and I did not find, some useful practical horticulture going on. They ought, for instance, to have been trying experiments with orange trees. The orange in Jamaica is left to nature. They plant the seeds, and leave the result to chance. They neither bud nor graft, and go upon the hypothesis that as the seed is, so will be the tree which comes of it. Yet even thus, so favourable is the soil and climate that the oranges of Jamaica are prized above all others which are sold in the American market. With skill and knowledge and good selection they might produce the finest in the world. 'There are dollars in that island, sir,' as an American gentleman said to me, 'if they look for them in the right way.' Nothing of this kind was going on at Castleton; so much the worse, but perhaps things will mend by-and-by. I was consoled partly by another specimen of the _Amherstia nobilis_. It was not so large as those which I had seen at Trinidad, but it was in splendid bloom, and certainly is the most gorgeous flowering tree which the world contains.