Nor does a nearer view detract from the splendour of this picture. The platform on which the house is built affords space for a large garden and shrubbery, extending rearward to the mountain-foot, from which they are separated by a high wall of stone.
The mountain is a conspicuous feature of the landscape. Not so much from its height: for there are others of equal elevation near to it; and further off, though still within sight, many still higher. Even the famed “Blue Peak” is visible, towering hundreds of feet above the surrounding summits.
Nor is it conspicuous from being isolated. On the contrary, it is only a spur of that vast elevated chain of hills, that, separated by deep gorge-like valleys, and soaring thousands of feet above the level of the Caribbean Sea, are known as the “Blue Mountains of Jamaica.”
Covering almost the entire area of the island—which is thus broken into an endless succession of gigantic corrugations—Jamaica presents a surface rough and irregular as the crumplings upon a cabbage-leaf; and “land of mountains” would be a title as appropriate as its ancient Indian appellation, “the land of fountains.”
The hill which overlooks the estate of Mount Welcome is less than two thousand feet above sea-level; but what renders it remarkable is the geometrical regularity of its outlines, and, still more, its singularly-shaped summit.
Viewed from the valley below, it presents the appearance of an exact and somewhat acute cone, up to within about fifty yards of its top. There the sloping outline ends—the line on each side thence trending vertically, and abruptly terminating in a square table-top, forty or fifty feet in diameter. In general appearance, this truncated summit is not unlike that of the famed “Cofre di Peroté” of Mexico.
The sloping sides of the mountain are densely wooded, especially that fronting the valley of Mount Welcome—towards which is presented a broad frowning façade, thickly clothed with a forest that appears primeval.
Alone at its top is it treeless—bare and bald as the crown of a Franciscan friar. There stands the square coffer-like summit, a mass of solid rock, which repels the approach of the vegetable giants that crowd closely around its base, some of them stretching out their huge arms as if to strangle or embrace it.
One tree alone has succeeded in scaling its steep rampart-like wall. A noble palm—the areca—has accomplished this feat, and stands conspicuously upon the table-top, its plumed leaves waving haughtily aloft, like a triumphal banner planted upon the parapet of some conquered castle.
This summit rock presents a singular appearance. Its seamed and scarred surface is mottled with a dark glaze, which during the sunlight, and even under the mellower beams of the moon, gives forth a coruscation, as if the light were reflected from scale armour.