Cromwell’s administration in 1655, Penn and V en ables
finally got possession and an English colony
was planted. B y that time the Spanish had e x terminated
the original population and had themselves
become reduced to about 1500 persons, with
an equal number of slaves, and were chiefly engaged
in cultivating cacao. Most of the Spaniards took
refuge in Cuba, while the negroes fled to the mountains
and became the nucleus of the maroons.
T h e first British colonists were a rude lot, and
speedily the buccaneering and slave-trading era set
in, and Port Ro yal was founded at the end of the
“ Palisades,” as the sand spit inclosing the bay was
then called, as the headquarters of the most iniquitous
combination of enterprises ever countenanced by
a civilised nation. A s the traffic became lucrative,
the place attracted adventurers from every quarter,
and “ Port Ro yal itse lf,” says an English historian,
“ united to more than royal opulence the worst vices
and the lowest depravity that ever disgraced a seaport
; nor could anything else be expected in a city
whose most honoured denizens were buccaneers,
most welcome visitors slave-traders. But a terrible
retribution seemed to await the sinful city of the
sand spit. On the 7th of June, 1692, near the hour
of noon, while the assembly was in session and the
people were occupied as usual with their schemes of
money-getting, or squandering their gains in revelry,
while the waters glittered in the tropic sun and the
summer air was filled with a placid calm, there came
a sudden roar, followed by a dreadful rumbling, as
if the mountains were shaken by a tremendous e x