Dear me! I shall never forget that ride.
Part of our way was past a wide stretching extent of primeval forest that clothed the mountain-side with green. Here were wonderful specimens of trees, some of which would rival the oaks of England—aye, even those in Windsor great park! There was the sandbox, whose seeds are contained in an oval pod about the size of a penny roll; which when dry bursts like a shell, scattering its missiles about in every direction; the iron-wood tree, which turns the edge of any axe, and can only be brought low by fire; the caoutchouc-tree with its broad leaves and milk-white sap, the original source from which all our waterproof garments are made. Besides these were a host of others, such as the avocado pear, soursop, sapodilla, and sapota, all of which, in addition to their size and grand appearance, bear excellent fruit. But it would have puzzled anyone to explore this almost impenetrable forest growth without the aid of a cutlass to clear the path; for, tall vines, like ship’s cordage, hung from the limbs of the trees and knitted their branches together in the most inextricable fashion, the lianas rooting themselves down into the earth and then springing up again for fresh entanglements, in the same way as the banyan-tree of India spreads itself.
This was the outlook from one side only of our route. On the other were to be seen patches of sugar-cane, planted with almost mathematical regularity and looking like so many fields of some gigantic species of wheat; green plantations of cocoa, with their ripe yellow fruit showing out between the leaves, similar to that of ours at Mount Pleasant; and several detached gardens, where the negro squatters were cultivating their yams and tanias, or else preparing their farina for cassava from the root of the manioc plant. The process consisted in first squeezing out, by means of an old sack and a heavy stone for a press, the viscid juice, which is a strong poison—the same, indeed, with which the Caribs used to tip their arrows in the old days of the aborigines—and then baking the flour on a griddle over a charcoal fire.
Passing through this varied scenery on either hand, our road led presently downwards through a series of valleys, clothed with vegetation and smiling in flowers. We crossed now and again some little stream rippling along over its pebbly bed, wherein were crawfish and tiny things like whitebait playing amongst the water-cresses that grew over the banks; until, at last, we reached a wide horse-shoe bay facing the wide blue sea, that stretched out to the distant horizon, laving its silver sand with happy little waves that seemed to chuckle with a murmur of pleasure as they washed the shore in rhythmical cadence.
There was but a single vessel here, and she was riding at anchor out in the offing some two miles from land, looking quite lonesome by herself in the distance.
She was a barque of some four or five hundred tons, with a broad, bluff-bowed hull that rose well out of the water on account of her not having completed loading her cargo. There was a long row of white ports along her side; and, as she rolled with the motion of the ground-swell, now setting inshore with the wind, she showed her bright copper sheathing almost to her keel.
“Is that the ship, dad?” I asked my father, gazing at her with longing eyes and wondering how we were to reach her.
“Yes, Tom, that’s the vessel I told you of, and we must now see about getting aboard if we can,” said he, preparing to dismount from his horse, whose bridle Jake had already taken hold of.
“And what’s her name, dad?” I then inquired, jumping down from Prince’s back as I spoke and giving the reins also in charge of our darkey groom.
“The Josephine of London,” he replied in regular ship-shape fashion; “Captain Miles, master and part owner.”