Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 85.djvu/533

Rh valleys, half a mile deep, of the Green and Yallahs Rivers, the lower slopes of which have been largely cleared and planted with coffee or vegetables. These valleys, with their changing lights and shadows, from dawn till twilight, are a constant delight to the dweller at Cinchona. In the early-morning they are in deep shadow long after the sun has lighted up the mountain tops around them. A thin veil of cloud floats far down below, and, in the stillness of the morning, the faint roar of the river, coming up from the dimly seen bottom, makes the valley seem miles in depth. All day long the clouds, driven by the northeast trade winds, roll over the Blue Mountains from the cool north side and quickly melt away in the dry air above the warm southern valleys. In the afternoon the sun sets in these valleys at four or five o'clock, and their slopes cool down rapidly. Then bits of the flowing cloud break off and slowly settle down into the valley beneath, to form anew the billowy curtain that screens the valley each night. A sight long to be remembered is such a sea of cloud, reflecting from its top the glow of a sunset, or the brilliant light of the tropical moon.

During the rainy season, or "the seasons," as Jamaicans call it, the clouds become denser south of the mountains. Then Cinchona itself is enveloped in cloud most of the time for days together. I might almost say enveloped in water, for the rain is so heavy that a tumbertumbler [sic] will fill directly from the skies in three or four hours. An inch an hour may fall for hours together. The spring rainy season, of heavy rains both