Originally an Indian trace, it had been widened by the Spaniards, and transformed from a line of mud six feet broad to one of thirty.

The only pleasant reminiscence which I have about it was the finding in flower a beautiful parasite, undescribed by Griesbach; {192} a 'wild pine' with a branching spike of crimson flowers, purple tipped, which shone in the darkness of the bush like a great bunch of rosebuds growing among lily-leaves.
The present Governor, like Sir Ralph Woodford before him, has been fully aware of the old saying--which the Romans knew well, and which the English did not know, and only rediscovered some century since-- that the 'first step in civilisation is to make roads; the second, to make more roads; and the third, to make more roads still.' Through this very district (aided by men whose talents he had the talent to discover and employ) he has run wide, level, and sound roads, either already completed or in progress, through all parts of the island which I visited, save the precipitous glens of the northern shore.
Of such roads we saw more than one in the next few days.

That day we had to commit ourselves, when we turned off the royal road, to one of the old Spanish-Indian jungle tracks.

And here is a recipe for making one:--Take a railway embankment of average steepness, strew it freely with wreck, rigging and all, to imitate the fallen timber, roots, and lianes--a few flagstones and boulders here and there will be quite in place; plant the whole with the thickest pheasant-cover; set a field of huntsmen to find their way through it at the points of least resistance three times a week during a wet winter; and if you dare follow their footsteps, you will find a very accurate imitation of a forest-track in the wet season.
At one place we seemed to be fairly stopped.

We plunged and slid down into a muddy brook, luckily with a gravel bar on which the horses could stand, at least one by one; and found opposite us a bank of smooth clay, bound with slippery roots, some ten feet high.