Newcastle is not unhealthy: it is merely a little damp and a little dull. From the point of view of the tourist it is magnificent. The romantic grandeur of the giant mountain chains stretching east and west; the wonderful view of town and harbour; the marvellous colour effects; the cathedral-like solemnity of the place--all these things are delightful in the extreme. But I turned my back on the place without regret. For I remembered that far below the valleys were bathed in light and warmth and colour. I knew that halfway down the mountain I should find the orange, the passion flower, and the scented air of the tropics. And I was glad when the horses bumped us along the path which zigzagged downwards through the clouds to the land of sunshine. [Illustration: GOING TO WORK, BARBADOES] THE RECREATIONS OF THE BLACK MAN CHAPTER XII THE RECREATIONS OF THE BLACK MAN Foremost in the list of a negro’s recreations should be placed the game of love. The black man makes love with the persistency of a Don Juan and with the fervour of a Mexican. He learns his first lessons in courtship long before the school-day age is over. Every boy of twelve has his honey girl, just as every coloured man of sixteen has his wife. There is an Arcadian touch in their love meetings--a fascinating rhythm of sensuous art in their songs of passion. The concert platforms and music halls of London have reflected, not incorrectly, many negro love stories; and the large straw hats and white pants and extravagant phraseology may be counted as roughly typical of the costume and poetry of Jamaica. The negro makes love with the natural freedom of a savage, but the Jamaican negro tempers his love-making with poetic entreaty. I can imagine that the Jamaican loves to hear the sonorous doggerel of his own ecstatic wooing--that he pleads with his mistress as much for his own pleasure as for hers. The black lady listens, and loves to listen, because his extravagant praise appeals to her vanity, and the black lady is as vain as any white daughter of a rich “buccra.” It may come as a shock and surprise to most of my readers to learn that the love-sick black man sometimes declares his love by letter. Whether this is always due to bashfulness or to the accident of geographical distance, I know not. But I have been privileged to read one or two impassioned missives duly authenticated as being the love letters of coloured men to dusky belles. They are interesting enough for reproduction here. I obtained them from a copy of a Christmas number of a Jamaican paper--the _Gleaner_ of Kingston. The first is written by a love-sick native to a Creole widow. It is addressed in full to “MRS. AGOSTISS R---- .