CHAPTER XXXIX.
ESCONDIDO.
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“They bore her far to a mountain green, To see what mortal never had seen; And they seated her high on a purple sward, And bade her heed what she saw and heard; And note the changes the spirits wrought, For now she lived in the land of thought.” “’Twixt Africa and Ind, I’ll find him out, And force him to restore his purchase back, Or drag by the curls to a foul death, Cursed as his life.” |
Hidden in a cleft of the hills of Jamaica, fifteen hundred feet above that blue tropical sea below, on the brow of a cool valley, where that bounding stream of white water rushes from the tall peak in the sky in tiny cataracts, till it forms a pool there, held in by the smooth rim of rocks, where the cane-mill is lazily turning its overshot wheel, with the spray flying off in streaming mist, and the happy blacks stacking the sugar-cane in even fagots as they unlade the huge carts with solid wheels cut out of a single drum of a cotton-tree; the six or eight yoke of oxen ahead ruminating under the shade of the tropical foliage, with never a switch to their tails; while the lively young sea-breeze comes flurrying up the valley, whistling among the coffee bushes below, bending the standing cane on the slopes, rattling the tamarinds, cocoa-nuts, and plantains, and then climbing with noisy wings up the mountain, is lost with a whirl in the heavy cloud which obscures the lofty peak.
Below the mill, where the mule-path crosses the foaming torrent by the shaky bridge, which stands on cocoa-nut stilts, and never yet has been thrown down by an earthquake, nestling under a precipitous crag, stood the mountain seat of Escondido. Vines and parasitical plants, mingled with scarlet creeping geraniums, made a living wall of dewy green and red on the face of the hoary rock, falling over here and there at some projecting acclivity in leafy torrents, and then forming a glowing green cornice along the topmost edges of the height.
The buildings stood on a flat esplanade below, looking down the gorge as from the apex of a triangle, and taking in the overseer’s 232 houses on the plantations, with their cone-shaped roofs, the fields of cane and coffee groves, the cataract between, down to the white snowy beach at the sea-shore, and the blue water crested by waves as far as the sight could reach.
The main house was square––standing on stilts, too, like the shaky bridge––the lower part fenced in by straight bamboos, of one story, with a broad roomy veranda going all round, where half a dozen grass hammocks were slung between the windows which opened into the dwelling. A great airy saloon and dining-room faced the valley, while six or eight cool bedchambers looked out from the rear up at the green wall of the precipice, and down on the sparkling stream of the mill.
But there were no loopholes for musketry, nor vaults and dungeons.
The sun had long passed the tall peaks of the blue mountains above, and the shadows had fallen down the valley until even the patch of white pebbly cove at the shore had become dim; and no sounds were heard save the rustling of the sea-breeze, the splash of the torrent as it fell off from the rickety old wheel of the cane-mill, mingled with the shrill cries and songs of the negroes as they unloaded the carts.