I. 66 IN KINGSTON HARBOUR. 66 WELL, I'm blessed!" said the man at the wheel; "them cussed niggers once more! " Running up into the harbour, sir!" echoed the steward with a face suggestive of coming fees; "and them black fellows in plenty awaitin' for you on the wharf.” There they were certainly-woolly heads, bare feet, ebon faces, loud voices-all ready and waiting this fine February morning, though the sun was hardly up, to pounce upon us and our baggage, as we left what had been our floating home for the last three weeks. Eighteen days out, and prosperous winds almost all the way. And now, in the clear bright light of a tropical morning, we were at last in sight of the 66 Land of Streams." Our Of course, we had had our own share of "incidents" to vary the weary monotony of the voyage. engines had gone wrong on one occasion, as they were in duty bound to do, and we had been delayed twenty-four hours in consequence. For three whole days, too, we experienced rather dirty weather; strong winds though fair, and heavy seas, which made us all very uncomfortable and not a little cross. Life on board ship becomes rather a burden when the saloon is dark as pitch, the skylights battened down, candles burning at meal times, and the "fiddles on the tables. Our meals then cease to be the bright oases in the flat level of our existence which at other times they are felt to be. Accidents are too frequent to be pleasant. I have a pretty strong recollection of one evil day in particular, when I received at breakfast the contents of the lamp-nasty, green, rancid, evil-smelling oil-over my plate and hands, and at lunch had the felicity of feeling a glass of port wine gently insinuating itself into my sleeve," and so on upwards," until its trickling course was arrested at a point considerably past my elbow. But, in return for these discomforts, we had the chance of seeing "sea scenery" such as we never had witnessed before. The eye never tired of watching the solid masses of water, the rippling clouds of spray, the breaking, white-tipped curling waves. Then the varying lights and colours of the billows-grey, green, and blue at times, and sometimes in the evening, with the flush of sunset upon them, a delicate purple, or rather a tint between purple and magenta, which is not to be expressed in words. It was a noble consolation, even though our cabins were soaking with water. Then by degrees, as we got into warmer latitudes, we came upon shoals of flying fish, and one solitary specimen we caught. Next our cow took ill, and one sad eve was gathered to its fathers; and a mysterious malady which was not sea-sickness attacked our travelling poultry-yard. But now all our troubles were over-we had arrived. These cocoa-nut trees, and these white rocks, these crumpled mountains, and this gently-curving bay, was "that wondrous isle in the western seas which we had come five thousand miles to explore. And truly our first view of the island, seen from the deck of the steamer as we steamed slowly past the long coral reef called the Palisades which guards the entrance to the harbour, in no degree belied our expectations. Not that Kingston itself, as it stretched along the shore with its dingy wharves and its lowlying dilapidated wooden houses, added much to the beauty of the landscape. But behind and above rose the magnificent range of the Blue Mountains, clothed, up to their very summits, with verdure, their green sides furrowed into many a fissure and gully by the impetuous rains which in spring and autumn sweep down the mountain sides and find their way to the sea in innumerable rivers and torrents. Dotted amongst them nestled many a white house and villa, for here "in the hills," to use a Creoleism, is the favourite abode of the better class of Jamaica society, whilst at a giddy height above these, on the very crest of the hill, and apparently amongst the clouds, stood the military station of Newcastle, nearly 4000 feet above the sea-its snowy tents and houses stretching away over the rocks, like a flock of sheep on a Highland mountain. We had but time to take a general view of the scene, when we were made fast to our moorings at the Company's wharf. In one moment, like the sudden apparition of a B |