AMONGST THE MOUNTAIN

Otago Witness, Issue 2249, 8 April 1897, Page 49

AMONGST THE MOUNTAIN

For every two white parsons on the i?l*md of Jamaica there ara 60 negroes. Many of the latter live ia tiny cabins high up on the mountains. . . . After speculating aa to their domestic haoitd and environment for two or three weeks, I resolved to make a journey to the clouu» '%nd see them with my own eyes. So one morning I put on a pair of buckskin mocassins and leather loggings, a lUnnel ahirt, and a straw hat, took a, bamboo staff which I had cut in tha woods a few days before, and set forth. It happened to be the first day of January 1894. . . . The laud in the mountains of Jamaica ia doubtless Government; land, which sells for about 50c an acre. If, however, it •is measured on the horizontal, such an eßtsttea* this must come cheap indeed ; for I don't believe the horizontal extent of this plantation, which might have had an area of a quarter of an acre, was more than ,15ft or 20ft. It is a perpendicular region. The moßt convenient, way to operate such holdings would be to rig a derrick to tha top, anil swing the man with the hoe by a rope in front of his field of labour. He would have to be careful in gathering his produce, le3t it shoald escape his grasp, and roll half a mile down into the depths of the valley. In addition to yams, bananas, and coco, there were a number of coffea bushes and a HLtle clump of sugar cane ; but in the absence o! the proprietors I did nofc feel at; liberty to Jhelp myself to anything. But where could the proprietors be 1 One would expect to find at least a superannuated grandfather or a brace of pickaninnies left behind to receive company. Had the family perhaps Keen me coming, and fancying I was the tax collector, concealed themselves, in the surrounding ehrubbery 7 I peered this way and that, but nothing was to be seen. It was odd ; but there must be other cabins in the neighbourhood, and I set forth to explore them. What could have happened ? Had some secret signal to disappear been passed around, and ware my movements being watched by eyes to me invisible 1 I began to feel embarrassed, if not uneasy. There had been a good deal of talk in the local papers lately about obi. Were these vanished people working up a spell with a view to my destruction ? The absence of one or two families from the community might have been explained ; but that all of them should desert their dwellings at the same time aeemed strange, if not ominous. I had ascended an enchanted mountain, whence I should be spirited away, and see home and friends no more. After all, thought I, these negroes are at bottom an uncivilised race. Christianity and association with the whitea have changed their outward aspect only. In their hearts they are still African savages. Their ways are not ours, and we really know nothing about them. In these mountain villages, almost utterly secluded as they are, who can tell what things are done, what religion followed, what purposes formed ? The coloured folk seem very childlike and amiable ; but cannot one smile and smile, and be an obi-man? Suppose now, continued I to myself, that while you are innocently scrambling about here, lost in the clouds, and out of reach and knowledge of your friends, the inhabitants of these villages

should be gathered together in some savaga and ominous place, with skulls and toads ancf cauldrons of hell-broth, performing a dire incantation, the object of which is to smite you with an incurable disease or cause you to fall down a precipice and break your neck. Is not such a thing conceivable ? Ia it nob probable ? Nay, can there be any other explanation of the emptiness of this entire village of cabins 1 It would be olever of yon, I added, to make the best of your way out oE this neighbourhood, and before you venture hither again to cause it to ha understood by these people that your object in visitfng their fastnesses is in all respects Christian and friendly. However, I was now apparently 60 near the top of the mountain that I was loth to retire withont having had one glimpse of the magnificent prospect which, in the nature of thing?, could not but be immediately at hand ; beside*, I hoped to find a way down shorter than that by whioh I had ascended, and to do that it was indispensable to see how tho land lay. Accordingly I turned to the right, climbed a crooked path like a staircase, and all of a sudden I did discover an outlook over the island of Jamaioa such as it was almost worth while to be the object of the wrath of thajobi people to see. I wa«r flo high up that almost the whole breadth of the groat Liguanea plain was hidden from me, and the nearest object I oonld sec was a large pen about two miles this Bide of Kingston. That town itself, therefore, seemed to lie almost at my feet ; the harbour, capable of containirg the fleets of several European powers of the first ciaes, looked like a little pond encircle/i by a breakwater no thicker than a pencil stroke ; the quaja outside if were little dots; and beyond uprose to an immense height the horizon o£ the Caribbean, lp.vol beyond level melting away from blue to grey, and from grey to aerial mist, finally uniting with the sky in imperceptible gradations of delicious colour. Could anything human or divine enhance the delight of such a scene as this. Sunshine, shadow, colour, lay in silence, tropically oalm — the silence of height and space. Hark ! what sound was thai; ? laeredible aa jfc may seem, I.fancied J. had caught a strain, of music. It had rolled forth stately and triumphant, apparently out of the bosom ot the vary atmosphere about me, bringing with it unaccountable memories of boyhood and of associations immeasurably far from thaae, and yet uniting in harmony with them. Waa it imagination — the glory of things seen seeming to utter itselt to theffear ? For' by what meanß could mortal mueic becoma audible on this bveathless summit unlsss by some miraole o£ the inner sense 1 Or had I climbed within range of cboira not of: earth, and been visited by the voioes of fclie seraphim aad cherubim Bißging tbe praises of God, who made this lovely earth and us and them? No ;it wan not mortal imagination nor caleatial miracle, for now tho strain oame •>aoe more, strong, rich, and jfyful — the musucal harmony of many voices ot men and women uniting in a hearty piean oi! worship •and thanksgiving. It rose aua swelled- and sank again, and then in the «uccßeding pau3e I heard a voice mellow and homely repeating words thnt seemed familiar, aad then the song burst foifch anew. Surely I knew that hymn. What son of Christendom knows it; not ? What reader of the Book of Lif«i haa cot at some period of his causer siood in the midst, of the congregation oa a Satiduy morning and joined with what fervour was iv him in that, noble human chanfc 'which bida tha mortal creature of Hit liand " Praise God, from whom all blessings fl.»w " '/ Yea, verily ; ard now 1 stood hers ia the tropics, on the Mount of Vision, aud heard 0.1 Huuiired sung again, not by argels, bn ( - !jy £, score or two of humble. dark-3kinDed, fellowcreatures who had lefs their lifcl]* cabins in the vßvinea and on the hilMdes on this New Year's morning, and were gathered together in the Lord's name, and — who shall doubt il ?— with His preaeccd in tha mifUt of them. It was a commonplace solution of t.he mystery of the deserted village .md all the rest of it ; but somehow or other ie touched a deep and tender placa in ni9. and standing »o_ high above the earth as I did I felt abashed' and bumbled. ITiad bean jesting about the obi, and this was" the interpretation ! A Jaw more steps brought me within siglab of tba roof and windows of a neafc little church parched upon 'She vary topmost summit of the mountain overlooking the world and, as I venture to nelieve, in the near neighbourhood of heaven. - I stayad awhile, and Shea turned and clamnered hastily down whence I had come, for I did not feel that I conld bouesfcly look tbat little congregation, in tho face. I had forgotten that New Year's Day was Sunday to them, and I. had speculated idly and injuriously as to the causes of their abandonment of home and business. I went down, down, through the nhadowy ravines and narrow gorge?, through the silent congregation of trees aud plant?, stumbling over fantastic roots and clutched by serpentine creepers. I did not notice them ; my mind was on other things. But the murmur of the brook, after long singing unnoticed in my ears, at length penetrated to the channel of my thought, and the discords flowed away on its current. The steepness of the descent abated, I slackened my nace and strolled at my ease beneath the green corridors and fretted roofs. A bird sang in a bush, a green lizard glanced across a stone, the forest lightened and broke away, and I entered the broad pasture, dotted here and there with sober mango?, and hedged with the prickly leaves of the penguin, from which I had set forth on my journey. It was the first day of the new year, and, thanks to the divinity which shapes our ends and out of idle curiosity brings forth fruits of beneficence, I doubt whether I could have spent the day to better advantage than I did. — From Julian Hawthorne's graphic account of " A Tropic Olinjb," with pictures by Gilbert Gaul, in the Century Magazine.