How far was the new clearing?
Oh, perhaps a couple of miles--perhaps a league.

And how high up?
Oh, nothing--only a hundred feet or two.

One knew what that meant; and, with a sigh, resigned oneself to a four or five miles' mountain walk at the end of a long day, and started up the steep zigzag, through cacao groves, past the loveliest gardens--I recollect in one an agave in flower, nigh thirty feet high, its spike all primrose and golden yellow in the fading sunlight--then up into rastrajo; and then into high wood, and a world of ferns--tree ferns, climbing ferns, and all other ferns which ever delighted the eye in an English hothouse.

For along these northern slopes, sheltered from the sun for the greater part of the year, and for ever watered by the steam of the trade-wind, ferns are far more luxuriant and varied than in any other part of the island.
Soon it grew dark, and we strode on up hill and down dale, at one time for a mile or more through burnt forest, with its ghastly spider-work of leafless decaying branches and creepers against the moonlit sky--a sad sight: but music enough we had to cheer us on our way.

We did not hear the howl of a monkey, nor the yell of a tiger-cat, common enough on the mountains which lay in front of us; but of harping, fiddling, humming, drumming, croaking, clacking, snoring, screaming, hooting, from cicadas, toads, birds, and what not, there was a concert at every step, which made the glens ring again, as the Brocken might ring on a Walpurgis-night.
At last, pausing on the top of a hill, we could hear voices on the opposite side of the glen.