lovely. On the fourth side the garden ended in a terrace dominating
the entire Liguanea plain, with the city of Kingston, Kingston
Harbour, Port Royal, and the hills on the far side spread out below us
like a map. Those hills are now marked on the Ordnance Survey as the
"Healthshire Hills." This is a modern euphemism, for the name
originally given to those hills and the district round them by the
soldiers stationed in the "Apostles' Battery," was "Hellshire," and
any one who has had personal experience of the heat there, can hardly
say that the title is inappropriate. From our heights, even Kingston
itself looked inviting, an impression not confirmed by subsequent
visits to that unlovely town. The long, sickle-shape sandspit of the
Palisadoes separated Kingston Harbour on one side from the blue waters
of the Caribbean Sea; on the other side the mangrove swamps of the Rio
Cobre made unnaturally vivid patches of emerald green against the
background of hills. On railways a green flag denotes that caution
must be observed; the vivid green of the mangroves is Nature's
caution-flag to the white man, for where the mangrove flourishes,
there fever lurks.

The whole scene was so wonderfully beautiful under the blazing
sunlight, and in the crystal-clear atmosphere, that the Guardsman
refused to accept it as genuine. "It can't be real!" he cried, "this
is January. We have got somehow into a pantomime transformation scene.
In a minute it will go, and I shall wake up in Wellington Barracks to
find it freezing like mad, with my owl of a servant telling me that I
have to be on parade in five minutes." This lengthy warrior showed,
too, a childish incredulity when I pointed out to him cocoa-nuts
hanging on the palms; a field of growing pineapples below us, or great
clusters of fruit on the banana trees. Pineapples, cocoanuts, and
bananas were bought in shops; they did not grow on trees. He would