We had no Spaniards in the 'Derwent,' but a happy jovial little crew of Englishmen and Englishwomen—or of English subjects rather, for the majority of them belonged to Jamaica. The bad weather was at an end, and all our nautical troubles nearly over; so we ate and drank and smoked and danced, and swore mutual friendship, till the officer of the Board of Health visited us as we rounded the point at Port Royal, and again ruffled our tempers by delaying us for some thirty minutes under a broiling sun.
Kingston harbour is a large lagune, formed by a long narrow bank of sand which runs out into the sea, commencing some three or four miles above the town of Kingston, and continuing parallel with the coast on which Kingston is built till it reaches a point some five or six miles below Kingston. This sandbank is called "The Palisades," and the point or end of it is Port Royal. This is the seat of naval supremacy for Jamaica, and, as far as England is concerned, for the surrounding islands and territories. And here lies our flag-ship; and here we maintain a commodore, a dock-yard, a naval hospital, a pile of invalided anchors, and all the usual adjuncts of such an establishment. Some years ago—I am not good at dates, but say seventy, if you will—Port Royal was destroyed by an earthquake.
Those who are geographically inclined should be made to understand that the communication between Port Royal and Kingston, as, indeed, between Port Royal and any other part of the island, is by water. It is, I believe, on record that hardy Subs, and hardier Mids, have ridden along the Palisades, and not died from sun-stroke in the effort. But the chances are much against them. The ordinary ingress and egress is by water. The ferry boats usually take about an hour, and the charge is a shilling. The writer of these pages, however, has been two hours and a quarter in the transit.
CHAPTER II.
JAMAICA—TOWN.
Were it arranged by Fate that my future residence should be in Jamaica, I should certainly prefer the life of a country mouse. The town mice, in my mind, have but a bad time of it. Of all towns that I ever saw, Kingston is perhaps, on the whole, the least alluring, and is the more absolutely without any point of attraction for the stranger than any other.
It is built down close to the sea—or rather, on the lagune which forms the harbour, has a southern aspect, and is hot even in winter. I have seen the thermometer considerably above eighty in the shade in December, and the mornings are peculiarly hot, so that there is no time at which exercise can be taken with comfort. At about 10 a.m., a sea breeze springs up, which makes it somewhat cooler than it is two hours earlier—that is, cooler in the houses. The sea breeze, however, is not of a nature to soften the heat of the sun, or to make it even safe to walk far at that hour. Then, in the evening, there is no twilight, and when the sun is down it is dark. The stranger will not find it agreeable to walk much about Kingston in the dark.
Indeed, the residents in the town, and in the neighbourhood of the town, never walk. 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. But this word of promise to the ear is strangely broken when the performance is brought to the test. More than half the streets are not filled with houses. Those which are so filled, and those which are not, have an equally rugged, disreputable, and bankrupt appearance. The houses are mostly of wood, and are unpainted, disjointed, and going to ruin. Those which are built with brick not unfrequently appear as though the mortar had been diligently picked out from the interstices.