At Home at "Mona."
We reached our place, "Mona," about a month ago, coming over in our own carriages. It's about sixty miles from "Round Hills," where we first were. Two of my brothers rode over on their bicycles. There is a high mountain, called Mount Diablo, five miles up and three down, that has to be climbed and descended. There are two fair hotels on the road. Between them is a small village, called Ewarton, where we passed the night.
The scenery all along the road is lovely, and when you get in among the mountains and drive along the banks of the Rio Cobra River, it is superb! On all sides rise those great blue mountains, and the river rushes and roars below them, and everything beautiful is there. The railway runs beside the mountains, and after a little enters a tunnel right through the heart of the biggest mountain. The sky is the loveliest blue, and little white clouds float in it, big vultures sail in it, and tall royal palms stand up against it and wave their great fronds. Pretty soon you get out of all this and into a long, hot, dusty road, the bushes on each side of which are so covered with dust that the rain cannot clean them; so they remain dirty, and are not worth looking at.
The hotel in Spanish Town is one of the best in Jamaica—cool, with large rooms and wide verandas. There is a garden in front of it with a thick royal palm in the middle. Kingston City is the hottest place on the island; but we are higher up, and that is much better, though in summer it is none too cool. I should like correspondents of my own age, seventeen, but foreign to the United States, and not boys.
Gwendolen Hawthorne.
Mona, Kingston, Jamaica, B. W. I.