plosion beneath their very foundations; and before
the startled citizens could gather their wits together
an earthquake of awful energy rolled through the
depths under their feet. “ T h e Palisades ” rocked
and heaved, houses tumbled in ruins, the waves
leaped over the land, carrying vessels with them,
and the sand spit sank from its ancient level.
When the tumult was over, a frigate had been
hurled over houses and landed high and dry, houses
were submerged beneath the waves, where some of
them remained visible for a hundred and fifty years,
and the mangled remains of buildings and water
craft were mingled over the dead bodies of 3000 of
the inhabitants. Only the fort and about two hundred
houses remained, and the next year the new
city of Kingston was founded on the flat land within
the bay and at the foot of the slopes where it now
stands. Port Ro yal was further scourged by a
pestilence that sprang from the decomposing bodies
of the unburied dead. Shortly after these disasters,
in 1694, a French fleet landed soldiers near the eastern
end of the island, who ravaged the country about
Port Morant. In 1712, a terrific hurricane swept
over Kingston and the remnant of Port Royal, almost
wiping them from the face of the earth.
T he Spanish made some feeble efforts to recover
their colony, but the principal disturbance in the
history of Jamaica for two centuries came from the
Africans, who had been forced from their own country
to be slaves in this distant land. T h e little
remnant that remained to the Spaniards, when they
were driven out, established themselves in the