ss much pomp
of vice-regal splendor. But this has long fled, and its sandy streets
are now almost as silent and sombre in the glittering sunshine as if
traversed only by the ghosts of the Spanish colonists who dwelt here in
peace until ruthlessly thrust forth by the English invader.

After the conquest, the island filled up with English, partly by
voluntary emigration, and partly by a double deportation from home,
first of refractory Cavaliers during Cromwell's protectorate, and partly
of mutinous Puritans after the return of the Stuarts. These often
renewed in the streets of Spanishtown the brawls of the mother country,
and the exclamation, 'My king!' which the negroes are fond of using, is
said to be a genuine relic of the time when it was the watchword of the
outnumbered but courageous Cavaliers. Even after the Restoration, the
Puritans were for a while in the ascendant in the island which the
Puritan protector had wrested from the great foe of Protestantism; but
gradually all traces of that hardy sect disappeared from a land which
an enervating climate and the rapidly advancing barbarism of slavery
rendered far fitter for another sort of inhabitants, namely, the
buccaneers. The buccaneers, it will be remembered, were not exactly
pirates preying indiscriminately upon all. They were rather English
corsairs, who took advantage of the long enmity between England and
Spain to carry on, in time of peace and war alike, perpetual forrays
against the Spanish settlements and commerce of the West Indies. They
were simply the jayhawkers and border ruffians of their day, and, with
some traits of chivalry, differed probably as little from pirates as
Quantrell and his fellow scoundrels differ from robbers. This villanous
crew early resorted in great numbers to Jamaica, which became as good a
base of operations against a power with which England was professedly at
peace as Liverpool and Greenock are now against another power with which
she is professedly at peace. Dr. Arnold, in one of his letters, says he
imagines the British West Indies have never recovered from the taint of
buccaneer blood. It is hard to say, for the universal corruption of
morals and justice induced by slavery, existing in the overwhelming
proportions which it had in the West Indies, renders it almost
impossible to measure how far any subsidiary influence of evil may have
helped to aggravate the mischief.

Jamaica, like the other colonies, soon received a cons