There is, however, a tradition still extant in Antigua, which most probably relates to this catastrophe. In the first years of this island becoming an English colony, it was, of course, but thinly peopled by Europeans, and consequently there was but little force to repel any invasion. Parties of Caribs from the different islands, particularly Dominica, used frequently to land upon it, and distress the inhabitants. In these invasions, no mercy was shewn, no quarter given, to the unhappy people who fell in their power, and after a combat, numerous were the bodies left upon the field of battle. Armed with their massive clubs and sharp spears, at the end of which was inserted a fish-bone, dipped in the poisonous juice of the lianas or the manchineel, the Caribs were no mean foes. No sooner had they set fire to a cluster of houses, or destroyed a field of tobacco, the chief production of the island in those days, than they immediately flew to their canoes, which were so fast in sailing, that before the alarm had subsided in one part, they were burning and plundering in another.[4] At that period, the house where the governor resided was situated near Falmouth Bay; and in the village itself the principal of the English settlers lived. Government House, from its situation, was particularly open to the attacks of the Caribs; and here the first part of the scene took place, which gave rise to The Legend of Ding-a-ding Nook.[5] It was night. The wind, which had been blowing rather hard during the day, as evening drew in, gradually sank, until about midnight, the time when the legend opens, it was a dead calm. Nothing was to be heard but the dull moaning of the waves, as they broke heavily upon the beach, or, now and then, the distant bark of a dog from the houses of the settlers, which, with the natural fidelity of that animal, had followed his master to these sunny islands, when he came in search of that fortune which his native land denied him. The family of the governor consisted of himself, his young and beautiful wife, two lovely children, and his numerous domestics. At an early period of this evening, his lady, with the warm solicitude of a mother’s love, had seen her infants safely deposited in their cot; and with a mother’s prayer for their happiness upon her lips, watched beside them until the deepening rose upon their cheeks, and their measured breathings, shewed that they slept the quiet sleep of childhood.