Not more than a mile to the west of St. Ann’s Bay is the site of the first capital of the island, =Sevilla Nueva=, or “Sevilla d’Oro,” as it was afterwards called. This town was founded by Juan d’Esquivel, the first Spanish governor of Jamaica, he having been commissioned and sent over by Diego Columbus (Christopher’s son), the hereditary viceroy of the New World, to establish a colony there. Esquivel arrived in Jamaica in November 1509, accompanied by a number of the viceroy’s friends. “Bringing with them the refinements of taste and the means of displaying it, they assisted in the foundation of Sevilla Nueva, whose fame long attested its superiority over every other town which has since been built here.” The town contained many buildings worthy of note, amongst which were a monastery, a cathedral, a theatre and many palaces. Sevilla did not long, however, continue the capital, having been abandoned for St. Jago de la Vega. The reason for the change is not quite agreed upon; some say that it was owing to the Spanish inhabitants of Sevilla having in their wars with the natives been suddenly and entirely cut off, and others assigned the desertion to “a visitation of innumerable ants” that destroyed all the provision grounds of the people and compelled them to find a home elsewhere. Bridges, however, attributes the abandonment to the depredations of the French filibusters, and states that “the northern coast of Jamaica afforded frequent spoils to this bold band of corsairs.” No property in Jamaica has perhaps been handed down in the same family for so many years as =Cardiff Hall=. The first Blagrove to settle in Jamaica was a regicide. Land in St. Ann was early taken up—about 1665; and before the middle of the eighteenth century Cardiff Hall was a place of note. The earliest patent of land to a Blagrove of which a record has been discovered is to John Blagrove of 700 acres in St. James in 1689. On Orange Valley, near to Cardiff Hall, in the possession of the same owner, are the remains of a so-called Spanish residence; and, going further back, on “big pasture” is a series of Arawâk kitchen-middens of the usual type, from which a small modelled human head of greater naturalistic treatment than is usually met with was excavated in April 1914. Other middens are near this series, indicating a thick population in aboriginal times. It is conceivable that the residents were amongst the first to welcome Columbus on his landing at Dry Harbour, a few miles off. The present building of Cardiff Hall, which possesses more architectural features than most houses in the colony, of which the fine old mahogany staircase is not the least noticeable, probably dates from the middle of the eighteenth century. It displays details of a Renaissance character, such as a line of columns in the entrance hall, a three-light window in what was evidently the drawing room upstairs, and an ornamentation over the doorways dating from about the closing years of the century.