and beyond it the broad blue
expanse of the Caribbean Sea. The foreground was like an English park,
studded over with handsome forest trees and broken by the rains into
picturesque ravines. Some acres were planted with oranges of the choicer
sorts, as an experiment to show what Jamaica could do, but they were as
yet young and had not come into bearing. Round the house were gardens
where the treasures of our hot-houses were carelessly and lavishly
scattered. Stephanotis trailed along the railing or climbed over the
trellis. Oleanders white and pink waved over marble basins, and were
sprinkled by the spray from spouting fountains. Crotons stood about in
tubs, not small plants as we know them, but large shrubs; great purple
or parti-coloured bushes. They have a fancy for crotons in the West
Indies; I suppose as a change from the monotony of green. I cannot share
it. A red leaf, except in autumn before it falls, is a kind of monster,
and I am glad that Nature has made so few of them. In the shade of the
trees behind the house was a collection of orchids, the most perfect, I
believe, in the island.

[Illustration: KINGSTON AND HARBOUR FROM CHERRY GARDEN.]

And here Gordon had lived. Here he had been arrested and carried away to
his death; his crime being that he had dreamt of regenerating the negro
race by baptising them in the Jordan of English Radicalism. He would
have brought about nothing but confusion, and have precipitated Jamaica
prematurely into the black anarchy into which perhaps it is still
destined to fall. But to hang him was an extreme measure, and, in the
present state of public opinion, a dangerous one.

One does not associate the sons of darkness with keen perceptions of the
beautiful. Yet no mortal ever selected a lovelier spot for a residence
than did Gordon in choosing Cherry Garden. How often had his round dark
eyes wandered over the scenes at which I was gazing, watched the early
rays of the sun slanting upwards to the high peaks of the Blue
Mountains, or the last as he sank in gold and crimson behind the hills
at Mandeville; watched the great steamers entering or leaving Port
Royal, and at night the gleam of the lighthouse from among the palm
trees on the spit. Poor fellow! one felt very sorry for him, and sorry
for Mr. Eyre, too. The only good that came of it all was the surrender
of the constitution and the return to Crown government, and this our
wonderful statesmen are beginning to undo.

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