and, with a sigh, resigned oneself to a four or five miles’ mountain walk at the end of a long day, and started up the steep zigzag, through cacao groves, past the loveliest gardens—­I recollect in one an agave in flower, nigh thirty feet high, its spike all primrose and golden yellow in the fading sunlight—­then up into rastrajo; and then into high wood, and a world of ferns—­tree ferns, climbing ferns, and all other ferns which ever delighted the eye in an English hothouse.  For along these northern slopes, sheltered from the sun for the greater part of the year, and for ever watered by the steam of the trade-wind, ferns are far more luxuriant and varied than in any other part of the island.

Soon it grew dark, and we strode on up hill and down dale, at one time for a mile or more through burnt forest, with its ghastly spider-work of leafless decaying branches and creepers against the moonlit sky—­a sad sight:  but music enough we had to cheer us on our way.  We did not hear the howl of a monkey, nor the yell of a tiger-cat, common enough on the mountains which lay in front of us; but of harping, fiddling, humming, drumming, croaking, clacking, snoring, screaming, hooting, from cicadas, toads, birds, and what not, there was a concert at every step, which made the glens ring again, as the Brocken might ring on a Walpurgis-night.

At last, pausing on the top of a hill, we could hear voices on the opposite side of the glen.  Shouts and ‘cooeys’ soon brought us to the party which were awaiting us.  We hurried joyfully down a steep hillside, across a shallow ford, and then up another hillside—­this time with care, for the felled logs and brushwood lay all about a path full of stumps, and we needed a guide to show us our way in the moonlight up to the hospitable house above.  And a right hospitable house it was.  Its owner, a French gentleman of ancient Irish family—­whose ancestors probably had gone to France as one of the valiant ‘Irish Brigade’; whose children may have emigrated thence to St. Domingo, and their children or grandchildren again to Trinidad—­ had prepared for us in the wilderness a right sumptuous feast:  ’nor did any soul lack aught of the equal banquet.’

We went to bed; or, rather, I did.  For here, as elsewhere before and after, I was compelled, by the courtesy of the Governor, to occupy the one bed of the house, as being the oldest, least acclimatised, and alas! weakliest of the party; while he, his little suite, and the owner of the house slept anywhere upon the floor; on which, between fatigue and enjoyment of the wild life, I would have gladly slept myself.