Frank Cundall

“ There is such a sameness about it all that one is constantly expecting the next turn to lead out into the open country, or to a cultivated estate. After a few hours’ hard scrambling one realises that here in truth there is a wilderness of rocks.
A large part of the Cockpit country has never been explored, nor is it probable that it ever will be, because the land is useless. One can cross the district from north to south, and east to west, and go all round it; sufficient to show that there is nothing to compensate for the effort, and that one part is quite similar to all the others. ”

“ A very great proportion of the poor inhabitants were crushed to death or drowned; and in one house alone, it was computed that forty, out of one and forty souls, unhappily and prematurely perished. The sea drove with progressive violence for more than a mile into the country; and carried terror, as it left destruction, wherever it passed. Two large ships and a schooner were at anchor in the bay, but were driven a considerable distance from the shore, and totally wrecked among the mango-trees upon land. ”

“ The graceful cocoanut palm sprang up in groups from the water’s edge, waving its feathery fronds over the rippling waters that dashed about its fibrous foot. Great bushes of prickly-pear and other Cacti were growing on the low summit of the bank, covering large spaces of ground, with their impenetrable masses, presenting a formidable array of spines: as did also a species of Acacia that grew in thickets and single trees. ”

“ Outside this fort, when I was there, there was a long line of cannon; but so extremely exposed to the enemy’s fire that it would be hard matter for any one to use them in case of an attack, and they are of no use at all in case an enemy gets into the harbour, for they can then be taken in reverse. This is the chief artificial fortification of Port Royal, and the natural fortification is not much except that it is now an island, for the town is all open to the harbour and partly to the sea. ”

“ We learn from a petition from the inhabitants of Port Royal to the Assembly, in October 1751, that during the hurricane of that year, the sea “by forcing up the sand to a level with the wall, has rendered it quite unserviceable, as it gained, by that means, a free and easy passage into the town, and filled the greatest part of it with such a quantity of water, that many of the inhabitants, in the extremity of the weather, were obliged to abandon their houses, and fly for shelter to places of greater safety.” ”

“ Then came Sir Henry Morgan, the conqueror of Panama, whose deeds of undoubted valour were smirched by cowardly conduct towards priests and defenceless women. In later life he turned respectable, even to the extent of persecuting his former comrades, when he acted as lieutenant-governor. But the old spirit died hard, and we are not surprised when we read that the governor, Lord Vaughan, complained that Morgan made himself “so cheap at the port drinking and gaming at the taverns” that he intended to remove thither himself, from Spanish Town, for the credit of the island. ”

“ The principal reminiscence of the great earthquake of 1692 which overthrew Port Royal is the Tomb of Lewis Galdy, which is on the opposite side of Kingston harbour, at Green Bay, where at one time many naval officers were interred. On a brick tomb rests a white marble slab with Galdy’s crest and arms. The arms are a cock, two mullets in chief and a crescent in base. The crest, on an esquire’s helmet, is a plume, and the motto “Dieu sur tout.” ”

“ PORT ROYAL The chief interest of Port Royal lies rather in the silent witness which through two and a half centuries she has borne to the naval activities of the island of Jamaica, and in a measure to those of the British fleets which have from time to time visited these waters, than in any part which she has played in the internal domestic development of the colony, although she has now and again sent to the Assembly such notable members as William Beeston, Samuel Long, Marmaduke Freeman, Peter Beckford, Matthew Concanen, Roger Hope Elletson and Samuel Jackson Dallas. ”

“ Porras replied, that it was not now time to talk, and that the Admiral must either embark immediately or stay there by himself; and turning his back upon the Admiral he called out in a loud voice, ‘I am bound for Spain with those that are willing to follow me.’ On this all his followers who were present shouted out, ‘We will go with you! we will go with you!’ and running about in great confusion crying, ‘Let them die! let them die! For Spain! for Spain!’ while others called on the captain for his orders, they took possession of the poop, forecastle, and round tops. ”

“ There is no writer who has thrown such a charm around the natural history of Jamaica, or who has contributed in the same degree to make known the various representatives of its topical fauna, as Philip Henry Gosse. Probably no other country possesses such a strictly accurate and entertaining account of the nature and activities of its leading animals, such as they were fifty years ago, as is found in the pages of “A Naturalist’s Sojourn in Jamaica.” ”

“ In 1716, William Wood, in his preface to “The Laws of Jamaica” says, “The Town of Port Royal, formerly much larger and very populous, is built on a key, which before the great earthquake, joyned to an Isthmus of Land that divides the sea and the Harbour of Kingston,” and there is additional evidence that, at various stages in the history of the Palisadoes, channels were formed by the sea across what is, after all, nothing but a string of islands more or less closely connected by drifted sand and stone. And an engraving, in Long’s History, as late as 1774, shows it as an island. ”

“ The estate at Hope, now a botanical garden, formerly belonged to the Duke of Buckingham. In “Notes in Defence of the Colonies,” by a West Indian, 1826, we read:
A decrease is not from premature mortality arising from slavery, for slaves live to great ages in Jamaica: eighty and one hundred years old are as common on estates as in any country of the same latitude, or more so; and I saw a few years ago a negro from the Hope Estate in St. Andrew’s, belonging to the Marquis of Buckingham, one hundred and forty-five years old. ”

“ The Town of Port Royal, being as it were the Store House or Treasury of the West Indies, is always like a continual Mart or Fair, where all sorts of choice Merchandizes are daily imported, not only to furnish the Island, but vast quantities are thence again transported to supply the Spaniards, Indians, and other Nations, who in exchange return us bars and cakes of Gold, wedges and pigs of Silver, Pistoles, Pieces of Eight and several other Coyns of both Mettles, with store of wrought Plate, Jewels, rich Pearl Necklaces, and of Pearl unsorted or undrill’d several Bushels ”

“ Detained with an elder brother in France, which he visited after the peace of 1802, for the purpose of gaining a knowledge of mankind, he endured, for seven years, an exile from his family and friends—which as it was inflicted on himself, and his unoffending countrymen, during a profound peace, will continue to stamp with infamy the despot and government that sanctioned it as long as the laws of nature and nations shall be understood. ”

“ The history of the West India regiment, closely associated with Up-Park Camp, is extremely interesting. It dates back to the American War of Independence when a British expedition from New York captured the State of Georgia. As a result, black and white loyalists flocked to the British camp where they were formed into corps of which the South Carolina was one. This regiment took an active part in the war, and in 1780 was converted into a cavalry regiment which at the close of the war was stationed in Jamaica under the command of Lord Charles Montagu. ”

“ Nicholas, stood across to Cuba, and anchored in a harbour (Guantanamo) , to which he gave the name of Puerto Grande. Leaving on May 1, he coasted along the southern shores, admiring the beauty of the landscape, noting the rivers, and receiving visits from numerous Indians in their canoes, with whom he exchanged beads and hawks’ bells for cassava bread, fish and fresh water. But soon, on the advice of his Guanahani guide (whom he had taken to Spain on returning from his first voyage) he stood due south in order to visit a large island of which the natives spoke. ”

“ Captain Du Casse—the Governor of San Domingo, perhaps best known in England as the opponent to Benbow in the engagement which ended in the latter’s death—being informed by two renegade Irishmen that the “island was easily taken; the fortifications at Port Royal were out of order and few men there, so that two hundred men would take that place, and two hundred more would march in any part of the country the people were so thin and so little used to arms,” and, being reinforced by three men-of-war from France, decided to make a descent on the island. ”

“ Nelson’s memory was kept green in Jamaica for many years. Monk Lewis saw, at Black River, at New Year, 1816, a “Nelson’s Car” with “Trafalgar” written on it, which formed part of the procession of Blue Girls in the John Canoe festivities. But there is no monument to the great hero in Jamaica as there is at Barbados; and yet the larger island owes just as much to Nelson as does the smaller. ”

“ In the year 1721, when strenuous efforts were made to induce immigrants from the British Isles to settle in the north-eastern part of the island, the Governor was empowered to make grants in the king’s name:
To every white person, being a protestant, thirty acres; to every white person in the family, thirty acres; to every free mulatto Indian or Negro, twenty acres; to every slave bought, five acres; with a proviso that no person not having fifteen white persons in the family should have above 400 acres in the whole. ”

“ Elizabeth was probably named in honour of Elizabeth, Lady Modyford, the daughter of William Palmer, whose tombstone is in the cathedral. It is one of the largest parishes and one of the most important. In the parish church at Black River are memorial tablets recalling to the memory of the living the many good qualities of the departed St. Elizabeth gentry. The handsomest are those on either side of the chancel to the memory of Caleb Dickenson and Robert Hugh Munro, founders of the Munro and Dickenson’s trust, which to-day maintains two of the principal schools in the island. ”

“ It is to be regretted that many of the objects shown at an exhibition of native remains held at the Institute of Jamaica in 1895, following on the discovery of the Halberstadt cave, as well as others discovered later, should have been allowed to leave the island. Such things once lost can rarely be regained.
Some of the early Spanish historians—putting as they frequently did X for J—wrote the name of the island Xaymaca, but it appears in its present form as early as 1511 in Peter Martyr’s “Decades.” He called it Jamaica and Jamica. The island is unnamed in Juan de la Cosa’s map of 1500. ”

“ Bryan Edwards points out that Fernando Columbus’s “Historie” states that the Indian name of Antigua was Jamaica, and he adds: “It is a singular circumstance that this word which in the language of the larger islands signified a country abounding in springs, should in the dialect of the Charaibs have been applied to an island that has not a single spring or rivulet of fresh water in it.” Until further research proves the contrary Jamaica must remain, what it truly is, the land of woods and streams. ”

“ About the year 1768 there lived at Edinburgh Castle, in the Pedro district of St. Ann, Jamaica, a desperado called Lewis Hutchinson. He owned the property on which he lived, and was said to have been a man of some education, but he was the terror of the neighbourhood, and it was not infrequent for a white man to disappear mysteriously, and it would then be said that Hutchinson had made away with him by shooting him as he passed the ‘Castle,’ which was furnished with loopholes and overlooked the road. ”

“ Wrecks and drowned men were everywhere seen along shore; general complaints of loss at land (least at St. Jago) which made it a melancholy scene, and to finish the misfortune, the slackness of the sea-breezes, calms, and lightning, stagnating waters, broods of insects thence, and a shock or two of earthquake that succeeded to the hurricane, combined to spread a baneful influence, and brought on a contagious distemper, fatal for some months through the island. There being no volcanos, the earthquakes felt here are always after great rains, on a parched earth that admits their penetration ”

“ In the towns there are several houses which are two storeys, but that way of building is disapproved of because they seldom are known to stand the shock of an earthquake or the fury of a storm.”
On Craskell and Simpson’s large map of Surrey, of the year 1763, is shown a view of a presumably typical Jamaica house, two storeys high, with an open veranda in front only. It is evident from what Long says that, at all events for the first century of the island’s occupation by the British, not much attention was paid to domestic architecture by the planters of the island. ”