This reply was certainly one marked by sound logic and good sense. It was the rule of force, not of right, that lay behind all claims to dominion in America, and this rule could be set aside by superior force. So Cromwell sent out a great fleet under command of Admiral Penn,—father of William Penn, the settler of Pennsylvania,—with a land force commanded by General Venables. The first attempt was made upon Hispaniola. Failing here, the fleet sailed to Jamaica, where the Spaniards surrendered on the 11th of May, 1655. They tried to take it back again shortly before Cromwell’s death, but did not succeed, and Jamaica has remained an English island from that day to this. This is about all we need say by way of preface, except to remark that many settlers were sent to Jamaica, and the island soon became well peopled and prosperous, Port Royal, its principal harbor, coming to be the liveliest city in the West Indies. It was known as the wickedest city as well as the richest, and when an earthquake came in 1692, and Port Royal, with the sandy slope on which it was built, slipped into the sea with all its dwellings, warehouses and wealth, and numbers of its people, the disaster was looked upon by many as a judgment from heaven. There is one thing more worth mention, which is that Morgan, the buccaneer, whose deeds of shameful cruelty at Panama we have described, became afterwards deputy governor of Jamaica, as Sir Henry Morgan, which title was given him by King Charles II. It is not easy to know why this was done, unless it be true, as was then said, that Charles shared in the spoils of his bloody deeds of piracy. However that be, Morgan, as governor, turned hotly upon his former associates, and hunted down the buccaneers without mercy, hanging and shooting all he could lay hands on, until he fairly put an end to the trade which had made him rich. Let us come now to the story of the Maroons, that nest of fugitives who made things hot enough for the English in Jamaica for many years. When Cromwell’s soldiers took possession of Jamaica few or none of those warlike Indians, who had given Columbus so much trouble, were left. In their place were about two thousand negro slaves, and these fled to the mountains, as the Indians had done before them. There they remained in freedom, though the English did their best to coax them to come down and enjoy the blessings of slavery again, and though they tried their utmost to drive them down from the cliffs by means of soldiers and guns. In spite of all the whites could do, the negroes, "Maroons," as they were called, long preserved their liberty.