The beauty of St Ann's, the principal grazing parish of Jamaica, surpassed any notion I had previously formed of it;--the whole district being a sea of gently undulating hill and valley, covered with the most luxuriant waving Guinea grass--across which the racking cloudlets, borne on the wings of the fresh and invigorating breeze, chased each other cheerily as if it had been one vast hay field, ready for the scythe--thickly interspersed with groves of pimento and fruit-trees, whose picturesque situations no _capability_ man could possibly improve. The herds of cattle that browsed all round us, whether as to breed or condition, would have done credit to the first grazing county in England. Lord Althorp should go and take a squint at St Ann's--I daresay the worthies there might make him custos. At length, as it drew on to three in the afternoon, we saw the cottage glittering in all the West India glory of green blinds and white paint, through the grove of fruit-trees in the centre of which it was placed. It was a long low one-story house, raised about ten feet off the ground on brick pillars, under which gamboled half-a-dozen goats, and surrounded by a cool and airy piazza, while the neighbouring thickets were peppered with a whole cluster of small white-washed buildings, comprising kitchen, gard-du-mange, houses for the domestics, pigsties, and poultry-yard. We dismounted at one end of the piazza, where a door, kept gaping ajar by a large stone on the floor, to which access was had by a flight of steps, seemed to invite us to walk in. We ascended the stair and entered. The dark mirrorlike floors, the fragrant odour of the fresh gathered bitter oranges which had been just used in polishing them, the green shade of the trees that overshadowed the building, tossing their branches, and rushing and twittering in the sea breeze--the beautiful flowers that crept in at every open blind and crevice--(a knot in the weather boarding could not drop out but in would pop a rose, or a bud of double jessamine, as if trying to escape the ardent gaze of the sun)--the twilight of the rooms, and the glorious view of the everlasting ocean in the distance (with a tiny white winglet of a sail sliding along here and there), crisped with blue waves, as if the water had reflected the mackerel sky that glowed over all, until both were blended out at sea beneath a silvery haze--were indescribably luxurious and refreshing--their sweet and cooling influences more strongly felt, from the contrast they afforded to the heat and dust of the lowland road we had just left. Oh! I could--curse it--_there's_ a mackaw--there _is a_ mackaw--a bird I detest and abominate--so my poetry is all blown to the moon in a jiffy. I would rather sit and listen to the music of the setting of a saw, while enjoying the luxury of a sick headach.--But let me whistle back my fancy again, and get on with my story.