Monk Lewis, writing on his visits to the Island in 1816 and 1818, in his “Journal of a West India Proprietor,” alluded to a “solitary tavern called Blackheath” near Claremont, and to a lodging-house in St. Ann’s Bay where he found “an excellent breakfast at an inn quite in the English fashion;” to the “Wellington Hotel” at Rio Bueno in Trelawny; to “Judy James’s” in Montego Bay, in St. James; to “Miss Hetley’s” inn at Yallahs in St.-Thomas-in-the-East; to a “solitary tavern” at Bluefields in Westmoreland, where he met “the handsomest creole that I have ever seen,” Antonietta by name, of Spanish-African parentage; and to “West Tavern,” which must have been somewhere near Ewarton, as it was nineteen miles from Spanish Town on the north road. He also alludes to “The Gutturs” in St. Elizabeth, where they found “everything that travellers could wish.” Lewis says: “All the inns upon this road [the western half of the north side] are excellent, with the solitary exception of the Blackheath Tavern, which I stopped at by mistake instead of that at Montague [an obvious misprint for Moneague].” While elsewhere he says: “Inns would be bowers of Paradise if they were all rented by mulatto ladies like Judy James.” A strangely long time was allowed to elapse after the settling of the various islands in the West Indies before printing presses were established. Perhaps some of the governors thought like Berkeley of Virginia, who, in his report to the Lords of Trade in 1671, wrote: “But I thank God, _there are no free schools_, nor _printing_, and I hope we shall not have, these hundred years; for _learning_ has brought disobedience, and heresy and sects into the world, and _printing_ has divulged them, and libels against the best of government. God keep us from both.” The earliest printing press in America was set up in Mexico before the middle of the sixteenth century. The first printing press in English Colonies was set up in Massachusetts in 1638. In Jamaica it was established in 1721, sixty-six years after the acquisition of the colony by the British. The first almanac printed in the colonies was produced at Cambridge in 1639. Unfortunately no copy is known to exist: the earliest existing being one issued at Cambridge in 1646 in private possession. Printing was practised at Havanna, in Cuba, as early as 1729, and in Martinique as early as 1727; a Royal printing house was established in St. Domingo in 1750. The “Barbados Gazette,” published weekly, has been called the earliest British West Indian newspaper. Its first issue appeared on May 18, 1731, but Isaiah Thomas, in his “History of Printing,” says that the “Weekly Jamaica Courant” was published at Kingston as early as 1722.