I am aware that many of the remarks and observations may appear desultory or trivial: but some indulgence is due to them from the circumstances under which they were made. They were first sketched down, as opportunity presented, in a pocket-book with a lead pencil; and at evening transcribed into my diary. They consist of such reflections as were made upon the places and the prospects immediately under my eye, and of such information as could be collected from intelligent individuals with whom I had the opportunity of conversing. The whole is the fruit of those moments of leisure, (rescued from a fatiguing journey) which the languor and pain of a miserable state of health would permit me to employ.
I hope the freedom with which I have expatiated on the description of forest and mountain {vii} scenery will not be unpleasing to those who have never had the privilege of beholding the grand and prominent features of nature, or of penetrating its sequestered glooms. For myself, I have always been an admirer of the sublime and beautiful in creation; and the immediate effect upon my feelings, produced by umbrageous forests, and by contemplating extended prospects from lofty mountains, was of so pleasurable and exalted a kind, that I wished to retain the impression to myself, and, as well as I could, communicate it to others, by a description taken on the spot.
"A state of convalescence (says a fine writer[1]) appears to me to be that of all others, which is most open to, and which indulges most in, the melancholy and awful impressions: and the transitions from the sublime to the pleasing, and from the sounds of discordance to those of melody, have their alternate and sympathetic effects, and
- ↑ Beckford. History of Jamaica, vol. i. p. 191.—Harris.
