The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1874-12-05 00:00:00

THE HURRICANE IN JAMAICA.

The Daily News has the following leader on the Mirth:Tine
v Well visited the Islam! of Jamaica on the nilt of Sunday
the first of November last, aud which appears to have been
of a more violent character than has been witnessed these
for many years past :

It began with a prelude of heavy rain, such rain as
is never seen out of the tropics, and is exceptional
even in latitudes where the rain gauge sometimes gives
results startling to the English meteorologist. 1 his
downfall was followed by violent wind, and from one
o'clock till nine in the evening, when the storm
which had culminated between live and Piir ;;ras
dually subsided, so fierce a gale blew as the oldest
inhabitants of the Island of Many Waters could
not remember. It is difficult to realise the irre-
sistible power of the swift and driving wind during
a tropical hurricane. Roofs are lifted, solid walls
are blown down, iron bridges are twisted by pres-
sure of the fallen trees and other debris thrown
upon the girders; whole villages of mud cottages are
washed away ; fields of sugar canes are laid flat or tern
out by tics roots; and hillsides black with coffee-trees
are denuded and left as bare as the rock. These are
the losses and dangers to which a tropical colony is
exposed by hurricanes. There is no insurance for the 1
planters against his enemy the cyclone. At any
moment the fairest promise may be blighted, and the
most abundant crop ruined by a gale, which rhea al-
most without warning, save for the agitation end
dropping of the glees, or, at least, with as little warning
as the cloning big as a man's band; which rages with a
form in the presence of which all human defences and
appliances are valueless; and which subsides as and-
daily as it has arisen, leaving nakedness and havoc
behind. it, The dismal traces of its visit, it is
true, are quickly removed by the burning sun and
the fruitful soil. In a few weeks vegetatien has
covered anew the desolated fields; the wrecked hovels
of negro and coolie are soon run up again; and a fresh
roof, is placed on the little Wesleyan chapel of the '
village. Nor would it seem worth while to remember
the famoms night of the hurricane, save for the deficit
in the revenue, the falling if of the sugar crop, the
bankruptcy of planten., and the terrible tale of vessels
foundered, run aground, and lost at sea, while the de-
struction of the wealth of the colony was going on ;
inland. During the late hurricane at Jamaica inure
than four-and-twenty vessels of all kinds grourekd,
sank, or suffered greiiious damage. The loss of life
does mit, however, appear to have been on great as
might have been expeeted.
The history of a tropical colony is nowadays chiefly
a record of earthquakes, hurricanes, and epidemics
grafted upon annals which are otherwise more quiet,
uneventful, and tame than those of an English village.
The people remember the Cholera year, or the year of
the Gnat Hurricane, from whieh they date the prim
tipal ei sits of their lives. A negre. to is lions tithe
titiano meaning oi life has no recognised duties, Will
refer his iu.i riae and his birth to the ono external
event which li,es within his memory. When buil
an oceurr, re, befalls him as the washing away of
his cottage, and the scattering among all the neigh-
bouring etrearns of his bananas, his cabbages, and his
onions, it is a thing to be remembered, and a tale
to tell, with pardonable exaggeration, to the children
and the grandchildren who come after. The time has
been when Jamaica had other and more exciting
stories to narrate. The Spaniards who landed there,
under the great Admiral, in 1491, found the place full
of harmless, docile, and intelligent people. In fifty
years there were mine left, save a few who escaped to
the fastnesaes of the moutitsins, and so dragged out a
miserable existence in hiding. They Were all done to
death, by forced labour in the mines, by wholesale
murder, by imported disease, and br brutalities whieli
Las Cased shuddered to relate. So then the island
was left without cultivators, and, no Indian being
anywhere obtainable, either from the mainland or
from Hayti, or any of the places where labosr haul
once been en abundant and 89 recklesely squandered,
they introduced the negroea. They flourished: they
multipliel from a few thousand or so when Penn and
Venables seized the island to thtee hundred thousand
when the emancipation of slaves took place. At one
time there were white slaves too; and it will be
curious to ascertain whether there are still left ail
mendants of those two hundred unhappy Somerset,