Kingston owes its position as capital to the misfortunes of its two
neighbours, Port Royal and Spanish Town. When Port Royal was totally
destroyed by an earthquake in 1692, the few survivors crossed the bay
and founded a new town on the sandy Liguanea plain. Owing to its
splendid harbour, Kingston soon became a place of great importance,
though the seat of Government remained in sleepy Spanish Town, but the
latter lying inland, and close to the swamps of the Rio Cobre, was so
persistently unhealthy that in 1870 the Government was transferred to
Kingston. Though very prosperous, its most fervent admirer could not
call it beautiful, and, owing to its sandy soil, it is an intensely
hot place, but in compensation it receives the full sea breeze. Every
morning about nine, the sea breeze (locally known as "the Doctor")
sets in. Gentle at first, by noon it is rushing and roaring through
the town in a perfect gale, to drop and die away entirely by 4 p.m. By
a most convenient arrangement, the land breeze, disagreeably known as
"the Undertaker," drops down from the Liguanea Mountains on to the
sweltering town about 11 p.m., and continues all through the night. It
is this double breeze, from sea by day, from land by night, that
renders life in Kingston tolerable. Owing to the sea breeze invariably
blowing from the same direction, Jamaicans have the puzzling habit of
using "Windward" and "Leeward" as synonyms for East and West. To be
told that such-and-such a place is "two miles to Windward of you"
seems lacking in definiteness to a new arrival.

As we rolled slowly along in our buggy, the Guardsman was in a state
of perpetual bewilderment at having growing sugar, coffee, cocoa, and
rice pointed out to him by the driver. "I thought that it was an
island," he murmured; "it turns out to be nothing but a blessed
growing grocer's shop." Half-way between Kingston and Spanish Town is