Waterbury evening Democrat. [volume] (Waterbury, Conn.) 1887-1895, 1890-01-31
JAMAlCA'S GALLONS POINT.
A "Reminiscences of Pirates and Poor, Per-
secuted Negroes.

A "Reminiscences of Pirates and Poor, Per- |
secuted Negroes.
Kingston is an old town according to |
our New World manner of computing |
age. In the year 1892 an earthquake |
entirely destroyed the greater part OF
Port Royal, and the panic-stricken folk,
fleeing thence to the main island from
the plague that followed, gathered to-
gether upon the shores OF Liguanea,
where little settlement of matched
huts marked the spot on which King
ston was afterward to arise in her glory.
1t has no such wild history as the moth
err town: its romance is mostly that of
the luxurious pr osperity of merchant
prince and sugar king: Yet, thanks to
the pirate and SLAYER, it is not altogeth-
err devoid of another sort of story.
Nowadays we read in the crumbling
docks and hoary warehouses volcelesS
history of the busy. prosperous times OF
which Tom Cringle" tells, when MIR.
l. and his brother merchants traded
sugar and rum and lockwood and pi-
mento for the gold and silver of the
Spanish Main and the flour and corn of
America. We read in the rickety tum-
bledown houses that helplessly crum-
BILE to decay in the heart of the town
the same silent history of the days when
those merchants entertained their
guests with princely hospitality
every thing in good style, wine superb,
turtle, etc, magnificent, and the COM
pany exceedingly companionable."
There we read of the time when rich
Jews lived in Oriental luxury, and
romance tells story of party
of wild roisterers rambling in
their cups through the streets
at night and trying to peep into the He
brew's house at the private doings with
in, and of how one vas caught by
bevy of beautiful ,Jewesses, bound hand
and foot with embroidered silken scarfs,
and beaten, by way of punishment, with
pearlhandled fans scented with musk
and rose water.
All this was very fine and pretty and
romantic, but there was a reverse to the
picture, dark, stern, terrible. The rich
people lived merrily and luxuriously,
but underneath the surface two hun
ircd and fifty thousand wretches
groaned and writhed in one of the most
merciless servitudes that the world ever
saw. There are other things to be seen
in Kingston that speak different his
now crumbling to ruin-thiIgs that
speak OF sullen cruelty and mortal
agony.
In the museum of the town there
hangs in one corner an iron frame now
rusting into decay. The frame is ex
actly the shape of a human figure, and
the iron bars open upon hinges and
close with a paddock. In the band that
arches over the head is a ring, and in
either heel long, sharp-pointed spike.
| 1t is the terrible cage" of which now
| and then we catch u mention in the
| records of the slave courts, where we
| hear tell of hapleSS condemned wretcheS
! incloscd in its iron grasp, and hung by
! its iron ring from some gallows in the
| sight of all. Not only in tradition, but
| in actual records, We hear tell of such a
miserable creature hanging in the
cage" dying for days in the shrivel-
ing glare of the sun, starved and tortured
and butfctted by the wings of the filthy
vultures that hardly waited for the eyes
to glaze before they were at work. l
was told that the frame had been dug
up out of the sand, and that when it was
| discovered Il female skeleton was still
within its grasp.
| Midway in the harbor between Kings
ton and Port Royal a tongue of land
| juts out from the peninsula toward the
reefs that bound the crooked ship chan
mel to the northwar1. Once this tongue
of land was bounded by a strip of white
coral beach, and covered with a growth
of wiry grass; now it is nearly smoth-
| cred under thick growth of mangrove
thickets, pierced by narrow canals that
run here and there through the tangle,
and dotted by little lagoons, in the
lonely waters of which herons and peli-
cans and frigate-birds live an almost I'M
| disturbed life.
The name by which that point of land
is known indicates its history with u
terrible hrevity: it is "Gallows Point"
There in the old days of seventy-tive or
a hundred years ago gaunA hideous
framework stood in the sight of all, and
almost always between the upright
posts one or more dead pirates hung in
chains swaying slowly to aAd fro in the
breeze, with hollow, sightless eyes
| turned now toward the white winged
ships, and now toward the long neck of
| Cagawaya, while buzZardS, the "John
| Crows" of Jamaica, sailed Solemnly
| round and round in the air above, their
| silent following shadow now and then
fitting across the gray stony brow be-
meath.
Every one quotes Tom Cringle's Log
in Jamaica, and it is, perhaps, with all
its eNaggeration, the best guide book
that that can be found of the island.
The author lived in those days, and saw
| most that he describes with his own eyes.
In one part of his story he describes
twenty-five Cuban pirates strung up at
Gallows Point in one morning.-Howard
Pyle, in Harper's Magazine.
| German Literary Activity.