I had seen what Jamaican life was like in the upper spheres, and I had heard the opinions that were current in them; but I wished to see other parts of the country. I wished to see a class of people who were farther from headquarters, and who might not all sing to the same note. I determined to start off on an independent cruise of my own. In the centre of the island, two thousand feet above the sea, it was reported to me that I should find a delightful village called Mandeville, after some Duke of Manchester who governed Jamaica a hundred years ago. The scenery was said to have a special charm of its own, the air to be exquisitely pure, the land to be well cultivated. Village manners were to be found there of the old-fashioned sort, and a lodging house and landlady of unequalled merit. There was a railway for the first fifty miles. The line at starting crosses the mangrove swamps at the mouth of the Cobre river. You see the trees standing in the water on each side of the road. Rising slowly, it hardens into level grazing ground, stocked with cattle and studded with mangoes and cedars. You pass Spanish Town, of which only the roofs of the old State buildings are visible from the carriages. Sugar estates follow, some of which are still in cultivation, while ruined mills and fallen aqueducts show where others once had been. The scenery becomes more broken as you begin to ascend into the hills. River beds, dry when I saw them, but powerful torrents in the rainy season, are crossed by picturesque bridges. You come to the forest, where the squatters were at their usual work, burning out their yam patches. Columns of white smoke were rising all about us, yet so abundant the timber and so rapid the work of restoration when the devastating swarm has passed, that in this direction they have as yet made no marked impression, and the forest stretches as far as eye can reach. The glens grew more narrow and the trees grander as the train proceeded. After two hours we arrived at the present terminus, an inland town with the singular name of Porus. No explanation is given of it in the local handbooks; but I find a Porus among the companions of Columbus, and it is probably an interesting relic of the first Spanish occupation. The railway had brought business. Mule carts were going about, and waggons; omnibuses stood in the yards, and there were stores of various kinds. But it was all black. There was not a white face to be seen after we left the station. One of my companions in the train was a Cuban engineer, now employed upon the line; a refugee, I conjectured, belonging to the beaten party in the late rebellion, from the bitterness with which he spoke of the Spanish administration.