The young leaves of the mango are of a brownish red; and amid the general profusion of green, they impart a not ungrateful relief to the eye.  Even their russet blossoms have a pleasant look.  But in a good season, when the fruit is ripe, the groves have a magnificently rich appearance.  Rows upon rows of yellow fruit look like lines of golden apples.  Most people are extravagantly fond of them; but for myself I must say that, excepting the superb ’No. 11’—­so named from being thus numbered on the captured French ship—­and one or two other rare kinds, I concur with the late Prof.  Adams, of Amherst, in thinking that a very good mango might be made by steeping raw cotton in turpentine, and sprinkling a little sugar over it.

Another fortuitous gift to Jamaica, so far as human intention is concerned, was the invaluable donation of the Guinea grass.  Toward a century ago some African birds were brought as a present to a gentleman in the west of the island.  Some grass seeds had been brought along for their feed; and when they reached their journey’s end, the seeds were thrown away.  After a while it was noticed that the cattle were very eager to reach the grass growing on a certain spot, and on examination it was found that the seeds thrown away had come up as a grass of remarkable succulence and nutritiousness.  It was soon distributed, and now it is spread over the island.  You pass rich meadows of it on every lowland estate; and it clothes hundreds of hills to their tops with its yellowish green.  I do not see what the island would do without it.  The pens or grazing farms in particular have been almost wholly created by it.

Jamaica has, of course, the usual West Indian fruits, the orange, the shaddock, the lime, the pineapple, the guava, the nispero, the banana, the cocoanut, and many others not much known abroad.  But the lusciousness of tropical fruits compares ill with the thousand delicate flavors which cultivation has extended through our temperate clime; while, at the same time, steam makes nearly all the best fruits of the West Indies familiar to our markets.  The resident of New York or Philadelphia, and still more of Baltimore has small occasion to wish himself in the tropics for the sake of fruit.

The great staple of negro existence, and therefore the great staple of existence to the immense majority of the inhabitants, is the yam.  There are some indigenous kinds; but the species most in use appear to have been brought in by the imported African slaves.  This solid edible dwarfs our potatoes, a single root varying in weight from five to ten pounds, and sometimes even reaching the weight of fifty pounds.  They are of all shapes, globular, finger shaped, and long; and the latter, with their thick, brown rinds, look more like billets of wood, crusted with earth, than anything else.  People in this country are apt to imagine them to be a huge kind of sweet potato, with which they have no other connection than that