We descended, I remember, to the sea-shore again, at a certain Maraccas Bay, and had a long ride along bright sands, between surf and scrub; in which ride, by the by, the civiliser of Montserrat and I, to avoid the blinding glare of the sand, rode along the firm sand between the sea and the lagoon, through the low wood of Shore Grape and Mahaut, Pinguin and Swamp Seguine {249b}—­which last is an Arum with a knotted stem, from three to twelve feet high.  We brushed our way along with our cutlasses, as we sat on our saddles, enjoying the cool shade; till my companion’s mule found herself jammed tight in scrub, and unable to forge either ahead or astern.  Her rider was jammed too, and unable to get off; and the two had to be cut out of the bush by fair hewing, amid much laughter, while the wise old mule, as the cutlasses flashed close to her nose, never moved a muscle, perfectly well aware of what had happened, and how she was to be got out of the scrape, as she had been probably fifty times before.

We stopped at the end of the long beach, thoroughly tired and hungry, for we had been on the march many hours; and discovered for the first time that we had nothing left to eat.  Luckily, a certain little pot of ‘Ramornie’ essence of soup was recollected and brought out.  The kettle was boiling in five minutes, and half a teaspoonful per man of the essence put on a knife’s point, and stirred with a cutlass, to the astonishment of the grinning and unbelieving Negroes, who were told that we were going to make Obeah soup, and were more than half of that opinion themselves.  Meanwhile, I saw the wise mule led up into the bush; and, on asking its owner why, was told that she was to be fed—­on what, I could not see.  But, much to my amusement, he cut down a quantity of the young leaves of the Cocorite palm; and she began to eat them greedily, as did my police-horse.  And, when the bamboo stoups were brought out, and three-quarters of a pint of good soup was served round—­not forgetting the Negroes, one of whom, after sucking it down, rubbed his stomach, and declared, with a grin, that it was very good Obeah--the oddness of the scene came over me.  The blazing beach, the misty mountains, the hot trade-wind, the fantastic leaves overhead, the black limbs and faces, the horses eating palm-leaves, and we sitting on logs among the strange ungainly Montrichardias, drinking ‘Ramornie’ out of bamboo, washing it down with milk from green coconuts—­was this, too, a scene in a pantomime?  Would it, too, vanish if one only shut one’s eyes and shook one’s head?

We turned up into the loveliest green trace, where, I know not how, the mountain vegetation had, some of it, come down to the sea-level.  Nowhere did I see the Melastomas more luxuriant; and among them, arching over our heads like parasols of green lace, between us and the sky, were tall tree-ferns, as fine as those on the mountain slopes.