under the guidance of Peter Martir, or Martyr, abbot of the cathedral, are still visible, in the ruins of a castle and a cathedral, and other fragments that have been dug up at different times. These had been carefully preserved when Sir Hans Sloane visited the town of St. Anne's, in the year 1688, who gives a minute detail of those antiquities in his history of Jamaica.*

The inhabitants of St. Anne carried on some traffic for mules and other cattle with the Spaniards of the island of Cuba, who

* I observed (says Sir Hans Sloane) the ruins of the town called Sevilla, among which was a church, built by Peter Martyr of Angleria, of a sort of freestone, to be had near this city, and bricks. A pavement was found two miles from the church. The city was so large, it had a fortified castle, the walls of pebble and brick; it was and is a good port. There was formerly here one great sugar work, at a pretty distance, the mill whereof went by water, which was brought some miles thither. The axletree of this is to be seen entire at this day. The town is now Captain Hemmings' plantation. The church was not finished; it was twenty paces broad, and thirty paces long. There were two rows of pillars within: over the place where the altar was to be, were some carvings, under the ends of the arches. It was built of a sort of stone, between freestone and marble, taken out of a quarry about a mile up in the hills: the houses and foundations stand for several miles along, and the ground towards the country is rising. Captain Hemmings told me he sometimes found pavements under his canes three feet covered with earth, and several times wells, and sometimes burial-stones finely cut.

“There are the beginnings of a great house, called a Monastery, but I suppose the house was designed for the governor. There were two coats of arms lay by, not set up, a Dualone, and that of a Count, I suppose, belonging to Columbus, his family, the proprietors of the island. There had been raised a town, part brick and part hewn stone, as also several battlements on it, and other lower buildings not finished. At the church lie several arched stones to complete it, which had never been put up, but lay among the canes. The rows of pillars within were for the most part plain. In the time of the Spaniards, it was thought the Europeans had been cut off by the Indians, and so the church left unfinished.

"When the English took the island, the ruins of this city were so overgrown with wood, that they were all turned black; nay, I saw a Mammee Tree, or bastard Mammee Tree, grow within the walls or tower, so high that it must have been a large gun could kill a bird on the top of it; and the most part of the timber felled off this place when it was planted, was sixty feet or more long. A great many wells are on this ground. The west gate of the church was a very fine work, and stands very entire: it was seven feet wide, and was as high before the arch began. Over the door in the middle was our Saviour's head, with a crown of thorns, between two angels; on the right side, a small round figure of some saint, with a knife stuck into his head; on the left, a Virgin Mary, or Madona, her arm tied in three places, Spanish fashion." Sir Hans Sloane's Introduction, vol. I. page 66, 67.

We may easily learn from this quotation, that the town of Sevilla, though now nothing but ruins, was once a place of considerable extent and population. And we may also infer, from the unfinished state in which the public edifices appeared when inspected by Sir Hans Sloane, that the town was deserted on some sudden emergency. Its appearance, therefore, combines with other corroborating circumstances, to assure us that the Spaniards were cut off by the Indians.

came over in the course of a single night, in small decked ves sels, and sometimes even in open boats. This intercourse, however, proved very detrimental to the settlers in this parish; for the Spaniards seduced many of the negroes by alluring promises; and likewise privately kidnapped them with impunity. Considering, therefore, that the passage is so short, and that a negro flying to Cuba becomes, on his arrival there, the property of the Spanish crown, is baptized into the Roman Catholic faith, and cannot be recovered by his heretic master, it is wonderful that the desertion was not greater. And this is still more surprising, as the court of Spain avowedly protected these refugees; and, so recently as the year 1768, refused to deliver up a number of slaves belonging to British masters, though application was made for their restitution by our ambassador at the court of Madrid.

From White River to Rio Bueno, the eastern and western boundaries of the parish, a level ground extends for the space of twenty-four miles along the coast. Its greatest breadth, to the foot of the hills, does not exceed one mile, the hills gradually ascending to high mountains. The soil of this tract of land is, for the most part, a shallow stratum of mould, upon a white hot marl, which produces, with good management, moderate crops of canes. It is therefore well covered with sugar plantations, and the hills with Pimento-trees; immense woods of this plant overspreading them to a great distance from the coast.

Two very extraordinary natural curiosities, highly gratifying to the view of the numerous spectators who resort to them, are exhibited in this parish. The first is a surprising cascade, formed by a branch of the Rio Alto, or High River, which is supposed to re-emerge, (after a subterraneous current of several miles,) between Roaring River plantation and Menzie's Bog. The hills in this quarter are many of them composed of a stalactite matter; by whose easy solution, the waters oozing through the rocks are copiously charged with it, so that they incrustate all bodies deposited in them. The source of this river is at a very considerable elevation above the level of the sea, and at a great distance from the coast. From thence it runs between the hills successively, broad or contracted, as they on each side approach nearer, or recede further from one another. In one of the more extended spaces, it expands its water in a gentle descent among a very curious group of Anchovy Pear trees, whose spreading roots intercept the shallow stream in a multitude of different directions. The water thus retarded deposits its grosser contents, which, in the course of time, have formed various incrustations around as many cisterns, spread

in beautiful ranks, gradually rising one above another. A sheet of water, transparent as crystal, conforming itself to the flight of steps, overspreads their surface; and, as the rays of light or sunshine play between the waving branches of the trees, it descends glittering with a thousand variegated tints.

The incrustation in many parts is sufficiently solid to bear the weight of a man: in others it is so thin, that some persons, whose curiosity induced them to venture too far, found themselves suddenly plunged up to the waist in a cold bath. The sides of the cisterns, or reservoirs, are formed by broken boughs and limbs incrusted over; and they are supported by the trunks of trees, promiscuously growing between them. The cisterns themselves are always full of water, which trickles down from one upon another; and although several of them are six or seven feet deep, the spectator may clearly discern whatever lies at the bottom. The lamina which envelop them are in general half an inch thick. To a superficial observer, their sides have the appearance of stone; but upon breaking any of them, there is found either a bough between the two incrusting coats, or a vacant space which a bough had once filled, but which, having mouldered away after a great length of time, had left the cavity. After dancing over these innumerable cisterns, the pellucid element divides itself into two currents; and then falling in with other neighbouring rivulets, composes several smaller but very beautiful falls. In fine, though verbal description is inadequate, it is hoped that the Plate annexed will convey some tolerable idea of this admirable workmanship of the Divine Architect.

The other cascade, though so named by the inhabitants, may be more properly denominated a cataract, similar to that of the Rhine, at Schaffhausen, in Switzerland. It proceeds from the White River, which is of considerable magnitude; and, after a course of about twelve miles among the mountains, precipitates its waters in a fall of about three hundred feet, obliquely measured, with such a hoarse and thundering noise, that it is distinctly heard at a very great distance. Through the whole descent, it is broken and interrupted by a regular succession of steps, formed by a stalactite matter, incrusted over a kind of soft chalky stone, which yields easily to the chisel. Such a vast discharge of water, thus wildly agitated by the steepness of the fall, dashing and foaming from step to step, with all the impetuosity and rage peculiar to this element, exhibits an agreeable, and at the same time an awful scene. The grandeur of this spectacle is also astonishingly increased by the fresh supplies which the torrent receives after the rainy seasons. At those periods, the roaring of the flood, reverberated from the adjacent rocks,