Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
itically arranged—light a cigar, and glance at the news of the island in the Daily Gleaner . The news of
the rest of the world seemed too remote and irrelevant to bother about. But the attractions even of this
splendid newspaper failed to hold out for long against the quiet and sylvan landscape that streamed past
the windows, the darkly-timbered uplands and sloping fields, and the weeping trees heavy with white
flowers that drooped so lyrically over the alligator-haunted meanderings of the Black River. Silk-cotton-
trees, sleeved and bearded with beautiful parasites, sailed past the windows and, beyond their branches,
the pale-green mountains uncurled. Prospects of parkland and glade and the deep clearings of the forest
unfolded like great flowers drawing the path of the eye deep into regions of almost dream-like beauty. It
is not surprising that 'Monk' Lewis, riding at the head of a cavalcade laden with hats and handkerchiefs
and knives and lengths of Oznaburgh cloth as gifts for the slaves on his eastern estates, drew rein un-
der the trees here. He paused and gazed across the celestial valleys of the May-day Mountains, and then
marshalled his Byronic musings into the pronouncement that this must be the most beautiful landscape
on earth. The journey became a second Childe Harold's pilgrimage. He forded rivers in spate, laboured
through precarious passes in the mountains, rode in the dark through gloomy forests while forked light-
ning sundered the heavens. In one of the inns where he slept the night his heart beat faster at the sight of
a beautiful coloured girl from Cuba, 'quite brown,' he quoted from the dramatist Colman, 'but extremely
genteel, like a Wedgwood teapot.'
At Appleton a posse of boys climbed in with baskets of oranges, soursops and avocadoes for sale, and
the train steamed on into the Parish of Manchester—called, like so many of the places in the island, after
one of Jamaica's numerous ducal governors. We stopped again at the little towns of Balaclava and Green
Vale, and at Kendal climbed out to catch the bus to Mandeville, which also perpetuates the Montagu
name. Here we stayed in a 'guest house' kept by an English lady. We stepped from the glare of midday
into shuttered chambers looming with mahogany furniture and bead curtains and revolving bookcases
packed with the English classics and best-sellers of many decades ago.
After a quiet afternoon with Countess Kate and the Stokesby Secret , by Charlotte M. Yonge I was
woken by Costa and Joan. We strolled past the parish church and across the ultra-English square to the
Manchester Club.
The members on the veranda were all English, but most of them, it appeared from the conversation,
had alighted in this little backwater after half a lifetime in India. Elderly ex-soldiers and civil servants
meditatively contemplated the golf-links over their whiskies and sodas, exchanging stories of
Rawalpindi, Simla and Darjeeling and half a dozen outposts of empire that had cruelly pre-deceased
them. They were joined in their reminiscences of khitmagars and khansamahs and the Saturday Club by
an elderly memsahib, sadly dethroned and transplanted.
' … Prim and trim as a tongo-pony
her tortured curls are planted like a lawn
and fenced across her forehead with a ribbon….
Where is an indication of her date?
Only the whiskered regimental groups,
cantonment champions
framed and frozen, stamp her dynasty.' [5]
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