On the whole, it may safely be said that there is no climate more like that which we imagine of Eden than that of the highland region of Jamaica during a large part of the year.  It is true that after a while northern constitutions begin to miss the stimulus of occasional cold.  But for a few years nothing could be more delightful.  The chief drawback is that at uncertain cycles there come incessant deluges of rain for months together, making it dreary and uncomfortable both in doors and out.  Years will sometimes pass before there is any excessive amount of these, and then sometimes for years together they will prevail to a most disagreeable extent.  They break up the mountain roads and swell the mountain streams to such a degree as to render travelling almost impossible, and in a country where your friends are few, you do not like to be kept back from seeing them by the imminent risk of finding no road at all on the side of a hill where at best there is barely room enough between the bank and the gully for one horse to pass another, or of finding yourself between two turns of a stream, with a sudden shower making it impossible for you to get either forward or back.  But during my residence I had just enough of these adventures to give a pleasant zest to life.  And after a tremendous rain of hours, when the sun reappeared, and the banks of fleecy cloud were once more seen floating tranquilly in heaven, and the streams ran again crystal clear, and the hills smiled again in all the glory of their brilliant green, and the air had again its wonted temper, at once balmy and elastic, it was enough to make amends for all previous discomfort.

Although no part of the island is peculiarly favorable to constitutions of the European race, yet with prudence and temperance foreigners find this midland region reasonably healthy.  The missionaries, who have mostly resided in the uplands, have but seldom fallen victims to fevers.  Foreigners must not expect to live here without occasional attacks of fever; but with care, there need be little apprehension of a fatal result, except to those of a sanguine temperament or of a corpulent habit.  And the general exemption from the dreadful ravages of consumption may well be thought to compensate the somewhat greater risks from fever.  Even on the plains, that immense mortality of whites from the mother country which once gave to Jamaica the ominous name of ’The Grave of Europeans,’ was caused as much by their reckless intemperance as by any necessity of the climate.  Or, rather, habits which in Great Britain might have been indulged in with comparative impunity, in Jamaica were rapidly fatal.  It is said that another cause of the excessive mortality among the overseers was that they were often secretly poisoned by the blacks.  On some plantations, I have heard it said, overseer after overseer was poisoned off, almost as soon as he arrived.  In most cases, I dare say, it would be found that over-liberal potations of Jamaica rum