two drawbacks which might have been foreseen.

I noticed that brick houses suffered more than stone ones. This was
attributed to the inferior mortar used by Jamaican masons, for which
there can be no excuse, for the island abounds in lime. Wooden houses
escaped scatheless. Every statue in the Public Gardens was thrown
down, except that of Queen Victoria. The superstitious negroes were
much impressed by this fact, though the earthquake had, curiously
enough, twisted the statue entirely round. Instead of facing the sea,
as she formerly did, the Queen now turned her back on it, otherwise
the statue was uninjured. The clock on the shattered Parish Church
recorded the fatal hour when it had stopped in the general ruin: 2.42
p.m. As far as I could learn, the earthquake had not taken the form of
a trembling motion, but the solid ground had twice risen and fallen
eight feet, a sort of land-wave, which apparently was confined to the
light sandy Liguanea plain, for where the mountains began no shock had
been felt. The fine old church of St. Andrew had been originally built
in 1635, but had been demolished by the earthquake of 1692 and rebuilt
in 1700, as the inscription at the west end testified. Here the words
"Anna Regina," surrounded by a mass of florid carving, showed that
Jamaica is no land of yesterday. The earthquake of 1907 shook down the
tower, but did not injure the collection of very fine seventeenth- and
eighteenth-century monuments the church contains. The inscription on
one of these, opposite the Governor's pew, pleased me by its
originality. After a detailed list of the many admirable qualities of
the lady it commemorates, it goes on to say that "in the yeare 1685
she passed through the spotted veil of the smallpox to her God."

We accompanied the Governor to Port Royal to take stock of the damage
there. Previous to 1692, Port Royal was reputed the richest and the