The Intermountain Catholic. (Salt Lake City [Utah] ;) 1899-1920, 1909-11-20
JAMAICA'S WSITATIONS.

Jamaica has once more encountered the wrath
OF the elements. Last week a hurricane racing one
hundred miles all hour swept the fascinating island
and In It's wake rolled a huge tidal wave followed
by torrential storms of rain. There is no island of
the West Indian group more fertile. attractive and
beautiful than Jamaica. Here the air is exouisi+e
transparent and invigorating in the winter months
1t IS land of fruit and flowers where the pinapnle
mature, where oranges more excellent than even
those of Grenada and Dominica grow, and where
shaddocks mangoes, orchids, expresses, tamarinds,
aloes and towering shrubs and vines cover bank and
slope with green and blue and white and yellow
Here too, in the brave days of DID, the buccaneers
and pirates sold their plumber and squandered their
gains in gambling and riot. Here in the last cen
fury of legitimate wars, whole fleets gathered to
take in stores, reft when shattered by engage
ments Here Nelson, the hero of Trafalgar. had
been, and Drake, Collingwood, Jervis and other
naval heroes of old England. Here prizes were
brought in for adjudication and pirates to be tried
and hanged and their bodies dumped outside Kings
ton, Jamaica's capital, to be pecked to pieces and
eaten by the Johnny crows
Here are the bays and estuaries these gentry
haunted, and the headlands made memorable bv
their desperate deeds, but the buccaneers and ri
rates are gone, even to the remembrance of them.
What they were and what they did lies buried awav
in book tombs, like Egyptian mummies, all as clean
forgotten if they had been honest men
In 1870, Great Britain acquired the island from
SPAIN and since then it has been to the Home Gov
eminent a worry, nuisance and an annoyance
An early difficulty was one which gave to the En-
glish language the word maroon" which means
to consign to a desert island The man or party
put ashore and left to shift for themselves are
"marooned" When Robson Crusoe alexander
Selkirk) abandoned on the IslanId of San
Juan, off the coast of South America he was "ma
rooned" by the captain of the ship on which Sell
kirk was a sailor. The word is an abbreyiation
from the Spanish "cimarron," meaning runaway
slave When Jamaica was conquered by the En-
gllsh In 1855, 1000 slaves fed to the mountains
and were called "maroons" They continued to
harass the island down to 1885, when bloodhounds
were employed to track them to their hiding
places. Next year there was roundup" and ZOO
OF the maroons were sent to Nova Scotia. Canada.
The slave business was always running sore
In Jamaica For many years in the eighteenth
century there were uprisings and riots among the
blacks, looking to the establishment of a "Black
Republic" like San Domingo. 1t was the strong
suspicion that the negroes and muattoes we're
plotting rebellion that led to the eyre" asita-
ton which, IN 1865, convulsed all England Cow
ernor Eyre when he assumed the administrators,
Of Justice in Jamaica, inherited many annoying
and awkward problems. One of these was az 70
the ownership of what were called "back lands -
or lands that had gone out of cultivation. Some
one had told the eX-slaves that if thew took moo
session OF these lands, paying the back rent to the
crown no one could disturb them. Acting on this
ADVICE they squatted on the lands and were get
ing along very well, when election proceedings
we're begun by the white planters. On their first +
appeal the ex-saves lost their case Then thew rose