Going on, we passed several beautiful ‘pens,’ as farms devoted to grazing are called.  These near town are little more than mere pieces of land surrounding elegant villas, the residence of wealthy gentlemen whose business lies in Kingston.  Here you see ’the one-storied house of the tropics, with its green jalousies and deep veranda,’ surrounded by handsomely kept meadows of the succulent Guinea grass, which clothes so large a part of the island with its golden green, and enclosed by wire fences or by the intricate but delicate logwood hedges, or else by stone walls.  On either side of the carriage road which swept round before the most elegant of these villas, that of Mr. Porteous, we noticed rows of the mystic century plant.

At last we left the comparatively arid plain, with its scantier vegetation, and began to ascend Stony Hill, which is 1,360 feet high where the road passes over it.  The cool air passing through the gap, and our increasing elevation, now began to temper the heat, and soon the clouds began to gather again, and a slight rain fell.  But I did not notice it, for every step of the journey now seemed to bring me farther into the heart of fairyland.  It was not any variety of colors, but the unutterable depth of green, enclosing us, as we ascended, more and more completely in its boundless exuberance.  From that moment the richest verdure of my native country has seemed pale and poor.  Reaching the top of the hill, we saw above us the higher range, looking down on us through the shifting mists, with that inexpressible gracefulness which tempers the grandeur of tropical mountains.

We descended the hill on the other side into a small inland valley, containing the two estates of Golden Spring and Temple Hall.  The former, which presented nothing very noticeable then, has since passed under the management of a gentleman who to a judicious and energetic personal oversight has added a kindliness and strict honesty in his dealings with the laborers much more desirable than frequent in the island.  As a result of this, Golden Spring has become a garden.  A great many more dilapidated estates would become gardens under the same efficacious mode of treatment.

The streams were so swollen by the rain that on coming to what is commonly a trifling rivulet, we found it so high as to cost us some trouble to cross.  However, we all got over, although one servant boy with his pack horse was caught by the current and carried down several rods almost into the river, which was rushing by in a turbid torrent.  I ought to have been much alarmed, but having a happy way, in new circumstances, of taking it for granted that everything which happens is just what ought to happen then and there, I stood composedly on the farther bank, nothing doubting that the boy and the beast had their own good reasons for striking out a new track, and it was not till they were both safe on land that I learned with some consternation that they had come within an inch of being drowned.