Kingston

“ Having paid my respects at the Admiral’s pen, I returned to Kingston. Most of the houses in the lower part of the town are surmounted by a small lookout, as it is called, like a little belfry, and usually furnished with one or more good telescopes, fitted with green blinds. It is the habit of the Kingstonians to resort in great numbers to those gardemange-looking boxes, whenever a strange sail appears in the offing, or any circumstance takes place at sea worth reconnoitring. ”

“ I know Captain Williams well. If he is bound for Kingston, he will give us a passage!” exclaimed one of the gentlemen; and he hailed the boat. She came alongside, and refusing all warning, they, taking their portmanteaus, got into her.
“We’ll take any message for anyone,” they sung out jokingly as they shoved off. “The storm you are afraid of will blow over, depend on it.”
“Fools are wise in their own conceit,” muttered the old gentleman, as he turned on his heel. I remember, even now, the sound of their laughter as they pulled away up the harbour. ”

“ In 1777 the convention which drafted the new state constitution met in Kingston, and during part of the year Kingston was the seat of the new state government. On the 16th of October 1777 the British under General Sir John Vaughan (1748–95) sacked it and burned nearly all its buildings. In 1908 the body of George Clinton was removed from Washington, D.C., and reinterred in Kingston on the 250th anniversary of the building of the stockade. In 1787 Kingston was one of the places contemplated as a site for the national capital. ”

“ The suburbs are remarkable for their beauty. The climate is dry and healthy, and the temperature ranges from 93° to 66° F. Kingston was founded in 1693, after the neighbouring town of Port Royal had been ruined by an earthquake in 1692. In 1703, Port Royal having been again laid waste by fire, Kingston became the commercial, and in 1872 the political, capital of the island. On several occasions Kingston was almost entirely consumed by fire, the conflagrations of 1780, 1843, 1862 and 1882 being particularly severe. ”

“ News was received by his family in London yesterday of the death at sea, at the age of 63, of Mr William Beatty Kingston, the journalist, and also well known as a writer of libretti and other musical works, Mr Kingston had for some time past suffered from diabetes, and he went a short sea voyage a fortnight ago hoping to recuperate. Mr Kingston who was born in London in 1837, was like his father, originally in the Public Record Office, but in 1856 he quitted official life and became attached to the Austrian Consular service. ”

“ After casting his thoughts about in vain for any other refuge, Kingston resolved to throw himself upon the protection of Johnson. Accordingly, as soon as he was a little rested, and his pursuers were well out of hearing, he crept from his hiding-place, and taking his direction by the moon, made the best of his way eastward, through the rough and thick wood. It is no easy matter to penetrate such a forest in the daytime; and in the night, nothing but extreme desperation could drive a man through it. ”

“ It does not present such an imposing appearance from the water as Kingston, but it strikes you instantly as a place of far greater magnitude and importance. There is a fresh, growing, healthy vitality about this place, that cannot fail to impress a stranger very forcibly the first time he enters it. He feels instinctively that he sees before him the strong throbbing heart of this gigantic young country, and that every powerful vibration from this ever increasing centre of wealth and civilisation, infuses life and vigour through the whole length and breadth of the province. ”

“ Her roads are almost impassable, her bridges are broken down, her coffee plantations have gone back to bush, her sugar estates have been sold for the value of the sugar-boilers. Kingston as a town is the most deplorable that man ever visited, unless it be that Spanish Town is worse. And yet they have Lords and Commons with all but unlimited powers of making motions! ”

“ Her husband was ten years older than herself, and, as she discovered after marriage, was cursed with a morose and churlish temper and disposition. Previous to her acquaintance with Gosford, she had been intimate with, almost betrothed to, Mr. Arthur Kingston, a young gentleman connected with the peerage, and at that time heir-apparent to the great expectancies and actual poverty of his father, Sir Arthur Kingston. The haughty baronet, the instant he was made aware of the nature of his son's intimacy with the rector's daughter, packed the young man off to the continent on his travels. ”

“ The chief industry of the people of Kingston seemed to be that of selling school-books, mince-pies, and other necessaries of life to the boys at the Academy. The grown young men of the town spent their lives trying to get away to some other cities. The younger youth of the town spent their lives trying to interfere with the pleasures of the Kingston academicians. ”

“ Kingston also states that he suffered for preaching against the Romanists. He remained at Henbury, where he had a small estate, till the revolution, when he sold his property and came up to London. He was soon lured by a pension to write for the government, but his pension fell into arrears and he suffered extreme poverty. ”

“ Men, even young men, whose homes are some mile or half-mile distant from their offices, ride or drive to their work as systematically as a man who lives at Watford takes the railway.
Kingston, on a map—for there is a map even of Kingston—looks admirably well. The streets all run in parallels. There is a fine large square, plenty of public buildings, and almost a plethora of places of worship. Everything is named with propriety, and there could be no nicer town anywhere. ”

“ After the death of Sir William Courtenay in 1535, Kingston married his widow, Mary, daughter of Sir John Gainsford, and left Gloucestershire to reside at Chudleigh, Devonshire, which, with Honiton, belonged to his wife's jointure. When the western rebellion broke out in 1549, under Edward VI—the rebels demanding the restoration of the old liturgy—Kingston was appointed provost-marshal of the king's army in Cornwall, and suppressed the outbreak at the expense of much bloodshed. ”

“ Mr Arthur B. Kingston, then a mate, had the cutter; and Mr Thorburn, another mate of the Wolverine, went in the gig. Water, provisions, and arms having been placed in the boats, and all being ready, they shoved off from the ship at half-past ten in the morning. Lieutenant Dumaresq had one of the black pilots in his boat, and Mr Kingston had the other with him. Sometimes sailing when there was a breeze, and at others, when it fell light, the crews, eager for work of some sort, pulling away with a will, they soon reached the mouth of the river Brass. The river is here pretty broad ”

“ All captured slaves are apprenticed for a number of years, and not understanding the language of the country, they apply themselves readily to labor, and become attached to the estate on which they are placed, and with good treatment show no disposition to leave. Although Kingston is a quiet and uninteresting town, lying on a slope with wide and unpaved streets, and sandy soil, still many of the houses, constructed of wood or stone, two stories high, setting a little back from the street, with verandas above and below, have an air of convenience for a warm climate. ”

“ From the first, Mr Kingston had but little confidence in the black volunteer pilot who had accompanied him on board the Lark; and now, though he urged him by threats to perform the duty he had undertaken, and tried to stimulate him to exertion by reminding him of his promised reward, he only answered, “This is no my bar!” and finally threw himself down on the deck under the bulwarks, refusing to take any further charge of the vessel. ”

“ Rio Cobre, near Spanish Town
Jamaica
Copyright, 1901, by Detroit Photographic Co.
Meanwhile, as the way clears, the priest reaches the ship, and is soon lost among the crowd of passengers who are waiting for the first boat ashore.
All of Saturday, we wandered about the dusty, uninteresting streets of Kingston, waiting for the great impression. But it didn’t come. We were ready and willing to admire the beautiful, but it did not appear. Kingston was even more unattractive than Port of Spain, Trinidad; dirtier, hotter, and in every way dull and uninteresting. ”

“ Such repeated calamities seemed to mark out this spot as a devoted place; the inhabitants therefore resolved to forsake it forever, and to reside at the opposite bay where they built Kingston, which is now the capital of the Island. In going up to Kingston, we pass over the part of and between Port Royal, leaving the mountains on the left, and a small town on the right. There are many handsome houses built there, one story high, with porticoes, and every convenience for those who are rich enough to live in them. ”

“ Many of the old houses, round about, speak very plainly of those days when Kingston was a royal borough, and nobles and courtiers lived there, near their King, and the long road to the palace gates was gay all day with clanking steel and prancing palfreys, and rustling silks and velvets, and fair faces. The large and spacious houses, with their oriel, latticed windows, their huge fireplaces, and their gabled roofs, breathe of the days of hose and doublet, of pearl-embroidered stomachers, and complicated oaths. They were upraised in the days “when men knew how to build.” ”

“ But before we pursue his history in his succeeding adventures, it may be necessary, for those who are unacquainted with the local situation of the gaol, from which the prisoner made his escape, to give a short description of it. Kingston is situated on a neck or tongue of land, formed by the River Saint John, and Bellisle Bay, running north-east and south-west on the western side of the neck, and by the Kennebeccasis running the same course on the western side, leaving a tract of land between the two rivers about five miles in breadth and thirty miles in length. ”

“ The old mate’s body lay between two guns, covered by an ensign; and it, with that of two other men who had been killed, was carried on shore and buried in the graveyard of Port Royal, where so many gallant British seamen sleep their last.
Meantime Mr Ferris and Ellen had gone on shore, escorted by Lieutenant Foley. Those were the palmy days of Kingston. Men-of-war and privateers were constantly coming in with rich prizes, whose cargoes added greatly to the wealth of the city; the streets were crowded with blacks carrying bales of all descriptions to the stores ”

“ The land rises rapidly beyond the flat on which Kingston stands, the Admiral’s Pen being some way above it, while Up Hill Barracks appear beautifully situated very much higher up the mountain.
The frigate lay at anchor off Port Royal, the crippled corvette had just been towed into dock. Jack and Terence were walking the deck under the awning, having got ready to go on shore. ”

“ We thank you in her name for the welcome accorded to us, and we identify ourselves with you in the satisfaction you must experience in the ceremonial of to-day, for in the achievement of the task of raising so large a sum of money, the inhabitants of Kingston show that they wish their children to follow the loyal, prudent footsteps of those who are proud of the name of this city, and are resolved that the next generation shall receive their instruction from no foreign hands, but at home. ”

“ No? Well, doubtless you will—some day. But d'y' remember Kingston Harbor, where the black boys dive through the green waters for the silver sixpenny pieces, and Kingston port, where the white roads and the white walls throw back the tropic sun so that it seems twice as hot as it really is—Kingston, Guy—in Jamaica, where the sun sets like a blood-orange salad in a purple dish? D'y' remember, Guy, and the day we were lying [pg 117] into Kingston in the Bess and the word came that my uncle was dead? Aye, you do; but don't you remember how he used to rail against me? To be sure—you were too young. ”

“ A sober, honest, persevering man, would find it to his advantage to undertake the circulation of the Kingston Gazette, weekly, on the following route: say, to start from Kingston every Wednesday morning, go through the village of Ernesttown, from thence to Adolphustown, and cross either at Vanalstines or Baker’s Ferry, and so on through Hallowell, &c., to the Carrying place; cross the River Trent, and return to Kingston by the York post road. ”

“ On reaching the ship they were handcuffed, and placed under charge of a sentry. Tom and I had to keep our watch, and got but little sleep that night.
As soon as we could we presented our note to Mr Saunders.
“Why, you lads are always wanting to go on shore,” he observed dryly; “one would suppose you were born on shore. However, as you conduct yourselves well, you may have the leave your friend asks for, and may return by the first boat to Kingston.”
“Thank you, sir,” we answered, highly delighted. “And may Sinnet and Chaffey go too?” I asked. ”

“ Kingston married Gertrude, eldest daughter and coheiress to Henry Talbot, fourth son of George, earl of Shrewsbury, by whom he had five sons and three daughters. His eldest son and successor, Henry, and his second son, William, are separately noticed. His third son, Francis, was a colonel in the parliamentary army, represented Nottingham in the later years of the Long parliament, and died in January 1659. ”