One Mrs. Akers of Nevis was a native of Port Royal in Jamaica, and lived there in the year of our Lord 1692, when the great earthquake made such a dismal havoc and destruction, as will hardly ever be forgotten by the inhabitants of that Island. She told me, ‘That the earth opened wide, swallowed her with many others, and then immediately closed up again’; she said she was in a state of insensibility during her short stay there. It could not exceed the tenth part of a minute before it opened once more to vomit some of them up again. I asked her what might be her thoughts of the matter just the moment before the Earth swallowed her down; and she answered, that imagining herself upon the brink of a boundless Eternity, she put up a short ejaculation to Almighty God, begging him to pardon her Sins, and to receive her Soul. The Hiatus she fell into was all Water, so that being very wet she received no other harm, excepting in one of her Cheeks, which grated a little against something that did but just draw blood. This water Hiatus closed again the next moment, catching hold of some people by a Leg, of others by the middle of the Body, and of others some by the Arm &c., detaining them in dismal torture, but immovably fixed in the ground, till they, with almost the whole Town besides, sunk under Water; which happen’d within three minutes after she had got safe on board a Ship then riding at anchor in the Harbour. Galdy was an affluent merchant of Port Royal, churchwarden from 1726, and member of Assembly for St. Mary, 1707; for Port Royal, 1708–09; for St. George, 1711; for Port Royal again, 1716; and for St. Anne, 1718. He enriched himself by the slave trade, as factor for the Assiento. Until about the middle of the last century various inns and posting-houses, or taverns, as they were generally called, were kept in Jamaica. Some were rendered unnecessary by the advent of the railway, and some were superseded owing to the more rapid travelling rendered possible by better roads. Of these the =Ferry Inn=, formerly the halfway house between Kingston and Spanish Town, has survived hurricane and earthquake, only to live on its departed glory, and no longer as a tavern. In 1677 “An Act for the Ferry between St. Catherines and St. Andrews” was passed, of which the preamble runs: Whereas William Parker, of the parish of St. Andrews, Esquire, hath at his particular Charge found out and made a very convenient Way between the Salt and Fresh River in the Parish of St. Andrews and St. Catherines, which will be of great use and advantage to the whole Island, in causing a more near and easie Correspondence with the several Precincts and whereas the said William Parker hath likewise set up and erected a Ferry for the better Accommodation of the said Passage, and whereas the same cannot be maintained without great and constant charges....