At length his emissary to Hispaniola was able to procure relief, and he left Jamaica for the last time in June, 1504.

Before Columbus set out on his first great voyage he had been promised by his sovereigns the government of all the lands which he might discover, together with a tenth of all their produce. The promise, like other royal promises in those days, was easily made, but as the greatness of the new discoveries gradually dawned on the world, King Ferdinand found it inconvenient to stand by his word, and Columbus died in 1506 with his just claims still unsatisfied.

His son Diego inherited his rights, and, strengthened by a decision given in his favour by the Grand Council of the Indies and by marriage with a niece of the Duke of Alva, he forced the king to recognize his claims to the extent of allowing him to go out to Hispaniola as governor. On arrival there he found that Ferdinand had divided the government of the newly-found continent between two other Spaniards, Ojeda and Nicuesa, and had assigned to them in common the island of Jamaica, from which jointly to draw supplies and slaves. To assert his rights he sent Esquimel, in 1509, with some seventy men to form a settlement in the island, and thus began the Spanish colonization of Jamaica 1.

Esquimel landed at St. Ann's bay, where Columbus had

Jamaica was specially connected with the family of Columbus, for Don Luis, son of Diego Columbus, who inherited the claims of his father and grandfather, compounded them for a small pension and for the titles of Duke of Veragua (on the mainland) and Marquis of La Vega (called after the new capital of Jamaica), which latter was exchanged for that of Marquis of Jamaica. The titles passed to his sister, who married into the house of Braganza; and finally, when in 1640 the Portuguese revolted against Spain and the house of Braganza ascended the throne of Portugal, the Marquisate of Jamaica with any rights appertaining to it reverted to the Spanish Crown (see Bridges' Annals of Jamaica, vol. i. chapter 5, and Washington Irving's Columbus, App. 2). According to some accounts, Jamaica at the time of the English conquest was still the property of the family of Columbus. Long says (book I. chapter xi), 'The island at this time belonged, as some say, to the Duke de Veragua, who was lineally descended from Christopher Columbus, so that it was the private estate of a Spanish subject and not a member of the royal demesne.' "Bryan Edwards (bk. II. chap. i) notices this view as incorrect.

landed before him, and on its shores he founded the town of Sevilla Nueva 1, or Sevilla d'Oro, the latter name commemorating the finding of gold among the natives. The colony grew and flourished, and sent out offshoots to Melilla and Oristan 2, the former said to have been situated like New Seville, on the northern coast, but more to the west on the Martha Brea river, the latter on Bluefields Bay, in the south-west of the island. Sevilla, however, did not long remain the chief settlement, for between the years 1520 and 1526, while Diego Columbus was still governor of Hispaniola, the town of St. Jago de la Vega (St. James of the plains), now known as Spanish Town, was founded in the south of the island, inland on the river Cobre, and in no long time it became and remained the capital and seat of government.

Few and, for the most part, evil are the records of Spanish colonization in Jamaica. The sites of the early settlements are hard to trace, and the history of the hundred and fifty years, during which the Spaniards bore rule in the island, is little more than a blank. The Indians, said to have been at first kindly treated, were afterwards exterminated, and the colony, which began with brightness and prosperity, gradually passed into obscurity and decay. It would seem that in early years, while Hispaniola was the centre of the Spanish-American dominions, Jamaica, which lay so near to its shores, shared in its progress and received the overflow of its colonists; but that, as time went on, the continent more and more absorbed the strength and attention of Spain, and Jamaica, regarded only as an appendage to the larger islands, became, like the family of Columbus with whose fortunes it was so closely allied, in great measure neglected and ignored.

Peter Martyr, the author of the Decades, was appointed Abbot of Sevilla, but seems never to have visited Jamaica.

According to Blome, Melilla was the first Spanish settlement in the island, and Long makes it older than Sevilla. It took its title from a town in Barbary of the same name, and Oristan either from Oristano in Sardinia (Bridges), or from a town in Barbary (Long). Some accounts place Melilla to the east of Sevilla at Port Maria.

Esquimel, the first governor, bore, according to one account at least, the character of a mild and humane ruler; under him the Indians settled down to agriculture, and the island made steady progress; and when he died, bequeathing his name to the harbour on the south of the island, now known as Old Harbour, he left the colony in a flourishing condition, for in 1519 or 1523 an expedition was sent from Jamaica to annex territory on the Spanish main.

The founding of St. Jago de la Vega naturally led to the decay of the northern settlements. As early as 15281 French freebooters had appeared and made themselves felt on the northern coast of the island, and by the middle of the century the town of Sevilla, whether sacked by pirates, or laid waste by the natives in the courage of despair, or forsaken for some other reason now unknown, had become a heap of ruins2. Spanish Town, though situated inland, was not far from the two great southern inlets of the sea, and here, at Esquimel now Old Harbour, and at Caguaya now Port Royal, the trade of the island was carried on.

Jamaica had been from the first intended as a place of supply for Spanish ships and expeditions; and its main trade is said to have consisted in providing fresh provisions for the homeward bound merchant ships. It was, in addition, a great pastoral country, and the savannas of the island were divided into some eight or at most twelve hatos or large ranches belonging to Spanish grandees, on which cattle and hogs bred and multiplied. Hence arose a trade in hides and in hogs' grease exported to Cartagena and Havana. Agricultural products, however, were also raised to some small extent, among them being cocoa, ginger, pimento, sugar, and tobacco, while

1 Bridges seems to make the founding of Spanish Town subsequent to this date, and a consequence of the incursions of the filibusters on the northern coast.

2 One reason given for its desertion was a plague of ants. Compare the account of the rats in the Bermudas (above, p. 12, and note), and in Mauritius (vol. i. of this work, p. 146, note 1).

in the forests of the island, in addition to mahogany and ebony, were cedar and other timber trées used for shipbuilding. Little or no gold was found in spite of the hopes raised by the golden ornaments which the Indians wore, but the absence of precious metals did not produce the counter-balancing good of saving the natives from extermination.

Such being the circumstances of the island, a half-opened land, given up in great measure to forest and to pasture, it is not surprising that the colonists were few or that the Spaniards found Jamaica less attractive than the larger islands and the vast continent teeming with gold and silver. At the time of the capitulation to the English, the population was estimated at no more than some 3,000, including about 1,500 settlers and as many negro slaves; and though the island had then been long in a state of decadence and the buildings of St. Jago or Spanish Town testified to a greater past, it would seem that at no time had Jamaica rivalled in prosperity the better known parts of Spanish America.

The Spaniards, we are told, occupied little of the island and that chiefly in the South; and the most vigorous element in the white population appears to have been Portuguese, brought in probably when Spain and Portugal were under one government and when Jamaica was connected with the house of Braganza 3.

Before Jamaica was finally annexed to the British empire, it had already twice been visited and ravaged by English forces. The first occasion was in 1597, when Sir Antony Shirley took

1 Long states (bk. I. chap. xi) that the English were informed on first occupying the island that a silver mine had been opened by the Spaniards. 2 In Long's Jamaica [bk. I. chap. xi] Bryan Edwards says (bk. II. chap. ii), 'Upon the whole, although the Spaniards had possessed the island a century and a half, not one hundredth part of the plantable land was in cultivation when the English made themselves masters of it.'

3 Blome gives three reasons for the smallness of the population: (1) That the Spaniards preferred Hispaniola; (2) That the proprietorship of Jamaica belonged to the descendants of Columbus; (3) That the island at first was planted by a kind of Portugals, the society of whom the Spaniards abhor.

and plundered Spanish Town, meeting with little resistance. The second was in 1635, when Colonel Jackson, at the head of 500 men from the Windward Islands, landed at Port Royal, overpowered its defenders, and exacted a heavy ransom for sparing the capital. These two expeditions, if they led to no other result, at least laid bare the weakness of the island against a foreign foe; and twenty years after Jackson's inroad the final blow was struck, and Jamaica became a British possession.

The state of England at the close of the Civil War was favourable to foreign enterprise. The nation had become trained to fighting; the government was in the hands of the strongest and ablest Englishman; there was enough restlessness and disaffection still remaining in the land to make it politic for Cromwell to fix the public attention on some outside object, and to seek after new possessions, to which the discontented might emigrate, and the idle and dangerous be deported. Further, the outrages committed by the Spaniards on English settlers in the small West Indian islands had aroused a longing for reprisal and revenge; books such as Gage's New Survey of the West Indies spread abroad a knowledge of Spanish America, of its riches and extent, and of the growing weakness of its rulers; while a further motive for action might be found in commercial jealousy of the Dutch and a desire to share in their carrying trade.

1

Cromwell is said to have hesitated at first as to whether he would break with France or Spain. However this may be, it is certain that his demands against the Spanish government for liberty of trade and liberty of religion were sound and patriotic, that there were old scores to be settled with the Spaniards, and that Spain had colonies to lose. He struck swiftly and secretly but with little success. The expedition sent out in December, 1654, was well designed in its objects and far reaching in its

This book, published in 1648, is said to have attracted great attention, and the author is said to have suggested to Cromwell to attack Cuba and Hispaniola. [Long, bk. I. chap. xi.]