Four miles above Spanish Town the hideously named Bog Walk, the famous
gorge of the Rio Cobre, commences. I do not believe that there is a
more exquisitely beautiful glen in the whole world. The clear stream
rushes down the centre, whilst the rocky walls tower up almost
perpendicularly for five or six hundred feet on either side, and these
rocks, precipitous as they are, are clothed with a dense growth of
tropical forest. The bread-fruit tree with its broad, scalloped
leaves, the showy star-apple, glossy green above deep gold below,
mahoganies, oranges, and bananas, all seem to grow wild. The
bread-fruit was introduced into Jamaica from the South Sea Islands,
and the first attempt to transplant it was made by the ill-fated
_Bounty_, and led to the historical mutiny on board, as a result
of which the mutineers established themselves on Pitcairn Island,
where their descendants remain to this day. Whatever adventures marked
its original advent, the bread-fruit has made itself thoroughly at
home in the West Indies, and forms the staple food of the negroes.
When carefully prepared it really might pass for under-done bread,
prepared from very indifferent flour by an inexperienced and unskilled
baker. It is the immense variety of the foliage and the constantly
changing panorama that gives Bog Walk its charm, together with the
red, pink, and fawn-coloured trumpets of the hibiscus, dotting the
precipitous ramparts of rock over the rushing blue river.
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