travelling almost
impossible, and in a country where your friends are few, you do not like
to be kept back from seeing them by the imminent risk of finding no road
at all on the side of a hill where at best there is barely room enough
between the bank and the gully for one horse to pass another, or of
finding yourself between two turns of a stream, with a sudden shower
making it impossible for you to get either forward or back. But during
my residence I had just enough of these adventures to give a pleasant
zest to life. And after a tremendous rain of hours, when the sun
reappeared, and the banks of fleecy cloud were once more seen floating
tranquilly in heaven, and the streams ran again crystal clear, and the
hills smiled again in all the glory of their brilliant green, and the
air had again its wonted temper, at once balmy and elastic, it was
enough to make amends for all previous discomfort.

Although no part of the island is peculiarly favorable to constitutions
of the European race, yet with prudence and temperance foreigners find
this midland region reasonably healthy. The missionaries, who have
mostly resided in the uplands, have but seldom fallen victims to fevers.
Foreigners must not expect to live here without occasional attacks of
fever; but with care, there need be little apprehension of a fatal
result, except to those of a sanguine temperament or of a corpulent
habit. And the general exemption from the dreadful ravages of
consumption may well be thought to compensate the somewhat greater risks
from fever. Even on the plains, that immense mortality of whites from
the mother country which once gave to Jamaica the ominous name of 'The
Grave of Europeans,' was caused as much by their reckless intemperance
as by any necessity of the climate. Or, rather, habits which in Great
Britain might have been indulged in with comparative impunity, in
Jamaica were rapidly fatal. It is said that another cause of the
excessive mortality among the overseers was that they were often
secretly poisoned by the blacks. On some plantations, I have heard it
said, overseer after overseer was poisoned off, almost as soon as he
arrived. In most cases, I dare say, it would be found that over-liberal
potations of Jamaica rum were the poison that did the mischief. But the
reports have probably some foundation in truth. An oppressed race,
seldom daring to strike openly, would be very apt to devise subtle ways
of vengeance. It will be remem