must always recall the buccaneers, and make Englishmen take a lenient view of men who practically made good to Great Britain the possession of her first colonial conquest.

The history of Jamaica, like the physical configuration of the island, is broken, uneven, full of sharp contrasts. The first age begins with Columbus, the second with Cromwell. English puritans succeed to Spanish grandees, and the clear, rather glaring light of business-like settlement to the dim haze of Spanish occupation. By the side of the wild freedom of Maroons and buccaneers is set the saddening record of negro slavery and sugar-planting; and pictures of wealthy, prosperous towns seem constantly to dissolve into ruin brought about by fires, hurricanes, and earthquakes. It is as though this one island had gathered into its story all the light and shade, all the brightness and all the miserable gloom, which accompanied the course of European colonization in the West Indies.

BOOKS AND PUBLICATIONS RELATING TO JAMAICA.

The Annual Handbook of Jamaica is a mine of information on the colony and its dependencies, including the Turks Islands, and contains a very good historical abstract and sketch of the political constitution.

The handbooks compiled by Mr. Washington Eves for the Colonial and Indian Exhibition of 1886 and the Liverpool Exhibition of 1887, should be noticed.

In addition to the very old books on the island, e. g. by Blome and Sloane, the following are standard works :—

LONG'S History of Jamaica. 1774.

BRIDGES' Annals of Jamaica (1827), which has a number of useful notes and appendices, and an introductory notice of the old authorities on the West Indies; and

GARDNER'S History of Jamaica. 1873.

Various books, such as Tom Cringle's Log, The Maroon, &c., give an account of Jamaica life and scenery.

THE DEPENDENCIES OF JAMAICA

The Dependencies of Jamaica are the Morant and Pedro Cays, the Caymans, and the Turks and Caicos Islands.

THE MORANT CAYS AND PEDRO CAYS.

These are two groups of coral reefs and islets, insignificant in size and importance, which, having been previously taken possession of by the British government, were definitely annexed to Jamaica in 1882. They are for judicial purposes part of the parish of Kingston. The Morant Cays consist of three islets on a bank about thirty-three miles south-east of Morant Point, the south-easternmost promontory of Jamaica. The Pedro Cays consist of four islets on the eastern side of the Pedro Bank, between 40 and 50 miles south-west of Portland Point, the southernmost cape of Jamaica. Both these little groups of Cays are rented for purposes of collecting guano and sea-birds' eggs, and for turtle-fishing, but the latter are becoming scarcer every year.

THE CAYMANS.

The Caymans are three islands north-west of Jamaica and south of Cuba. Some account of them is given in Long's History of Jamaica, where they are said to have been discovered by Columbus and named by him Las Tortugas, after the turtle which frequented their shores. Unoccupied by the Spaniards, they appear to have been colonized by buccaneers of English descent, and to have followed the fortunes of Jamaica when that island became a British possession. They are, by an Imperial Act of 1863, directly subject to the government of Jamaica, the Jamaica legislature being empowered to enact laws for the Caymans, and to give the local authorities of Grand Cayman power to make bye-laws and regulations for the islands; such regulations, however, do not take effect until signed by the governor of Jamaica, who is also by the Act in question declared to be governor of the Caymans, The local affairs of the islands are, under the governor, managed by a body consisting of nominated justices and elected vestrymen ;

and the small expenditure is defrayed by poll and cattle taxes, licences, and customs dues.

The islands are of coral formation and are surrounded by reefs. The westernmost and largest of them is Grand Cayman, which lies about 178 miles north-west of Jamaica, and about the same distance south of Cuba. Little Cayman is over 70 miles north-east of Grand Cayman, and the third island, Cayman Brac, is only about 4 miles east of Little Cayman. Grand Cayman is about 17 miles long from east to west, about 4 miles broad at the eastern end, about 7 miles at the western1. Little Cayman and Cayman Brac are about 9 and 10 miles long respectively, by I in breadth. Grand Cayman is low-lying and thickly wooded, skirted by a reef except on the west, on which side is the anchorage for larger vessels; there are breaks in the reef on the southern coast, enough to admit vessels of very small size, and on the north an opening leads into a large shallow bay some 6 miles across, known as the North Sound. There are some interesting caves in the island. The chief settlements are George Town, the little capital, on the south-west coast, and Bodden Town, about the middle of the south coast. The inhabitants, some 4,900 in number, are described as containing a large proportion of white men, descendants of English and Scotch settlers, healthy, well-made, and intelligent. The religious wants of the community are provided for by the United Presbyterians. Education has hitherto been much neglected, but under a recently-passed Education law improvement may be expected. The chief industry is turtle-catching off the Cays on the Nicaraguan coast. These are brought to the island to fatten, and are then sent to Jamaica and shipped to England. Over 5,000 turtles a year are exported at an average price of £1 each. Phosphate deposits of some value exist and were formerly worked, but have lately been neglected. There is some good grazing ground on which live stock. is reared, various fruits and vegetables are grown, and the timber

Long gives the dimensions of Grand Cayman at about one and a half miles in length by one in breadth. [Book I. chap. xii. § 1.]

includes mahogany, cedar, and dye-wood. The building of small schooners from the island woods has long been an established industry here, as it was in the Bermudas1, and in their homebuilt ships the islanders carry on their turtle-fishing, going as far afield as the coast of America.

The two smaller islands resemble Grand Cayman in their products and main features; they are fairly prosperous owing to the large exports of coco-nuts, between one and a half and two millions being annually exported. The estimated population on March 31, 1901, was 834.

THE TURKS AND CAICOS ISLANDS.

These islands, to which reference has already been made in connexion with the Bermudas and the Bahamas, form the southeasternmost section of the Bahamas group, the Caicos being separated from the Bahamas proper by the Caicos channel, and the Turks, still further to the south-east, being separated from the Caicos by the Turks Islands passage.

Grand Turk is one of the islands which claim or claimed the honour of being the scene of the first discovery of Columbus, but the group appears to have remained uninhabited down to the latter part of the seventeenth century, when, about 1678, saltrakers from the Bermudas took to paying annual visits to the island to carry on their trade. This spasmodic kind of occupation was interrupted by the Spaniards, who, in 1710, drove out the salt-rakers; the latter, however, returned, and for some forty years continued to collect salt, carrying on a petty warfare with the Spaniards, who resented their intrusion into West Indian waters. In 1764 the French from St. Domingo carried off some of these Bermudian traders, and, though they afterwards paid an indemnity for the outrage, the British government from this time determined to exercise a more direct protection over the islands.

1 See above, p. 17. Long mentions that Bermudian sloops called at the

Caymans.

See above, pp. 15, 83.

Consequently, an agent was sent there from Nassau, and, before the end of the century, the islands were definitely included in the colony of the Bahamas, in spite of the strong protests of the Bermudians and of the settlers themselves1.

This arrangement continued down to the year 1848, when a large number of the inhabitants petitioned for separation, on the ground of the distance from Nassau, and the absence of common interests with the Bahamas. The islands were accordingly constituted a separate colony, and were given a Council containing an elective element, but were placed under the general supervision of the governor of Jamaica. This system was in time found too expensive, and by an Imperial Act of 1873 they were definitely annexed to Jamaica. The islands are now controlled for local purposes by a Commissioner and Legislative Board consisting of the Commissioner, the Judge, and not less than two nor more than four persons nominated by the governor of Jamaica. The ordinances require the assent of the governor of Jamaica, and the Jamaica Legislature can pass laws applying to the dependency.

The whole area of the Turks and Caicos Islands is given at 166 square miles. The Turks Islands, called after a cactus which grows there, and which is commonly known from its shape as the Turk's head, are situated on a narrow three-cornered bank. They are nine in number, but there are only two of any size, viz. Grand Turk and Salt Cay, both on the western side of the bank, Salt Cay being about 5 miles to the south-west of Grand Turk. The area of Grand Turk has been given at about 10 square miles, that of Salt Cay at about 4; they are both lowlying islands, the highest ground in Grand Turk, on the eastern side, not exceeding 70 feet. The town of Grand Turk is the seat of government; it is on the western side of the island, and its buildings and roads are described in favourable terms. The settlement at Salt Cay is also on the western coast.

The bank on which the Caicos group is situated is much

1 See above, pp. 82, 83.