On the coast the climate is hot and humid, but at the higher elevations it is mild and delightful. The temperature at Kingston and the low sea-level region generally ranges between 70.7 degrees and 87.8 degrees Fahrenheit. At Cinchona, which is 4907 feet high, it runs from 57.5 degrees to 68.5 degrees. With rare exceptions, rain falls during every month in the year, and there are two wet seasons, each of about three weeks duration, one in May and one in October. The amount varies considerably; the yearly average for Kingston is 32.6 inches, for Cinchona 105.5 inches and for the entire island 66.3 inches. Hurricanes, which were of frequent occurrence during the early part of last century, have not visited the island so often of late years. Earthquakes take place from time to time, that of 1907 having been particularly violent and destructive. Transportation facilities are excellent, the roads are good and a railway 180 miles long connects Port Antonio, Kingston and Montego bay. Jamaica was discovered by Columbus on May 3, 1494, and was called Santiago by him, but this never supplanted the original Indian name Jaymaca, “the island of springs,” modified into its present form, Jamaica. Columbus put in at the island for shelter in 1505, and four years later his son Diego sent out Don Juan d’Esquivel to take possession of it in the name of the Spanish crown. Sant’ Iago de la Vega, now Spanish Town, founded in 1523, was destroyed by the British in 1596 and was rebuilt after their departure. The British raided the island again in 1635, and twenty years later they occupied it permanently, expelling the Spaniards entirely by 1658. During the three years that followed, Jamaica was under military rule and then a constitution modeled upon that of the mother country was established. About this time the island became a rendezvous for the buccaneers. These gentry quite often combined the roles of merchants or planters and pirates or sea-rovers. In 1670 the treaty of Madrid confirmed the British in their possession of the island and the buccaneers were suppressed. Jamaica then became a great slave market, and the growing of sugar cane and the manufacture of sugar on an extensive scale were begun. Civil disturbances retarded the progress of the colony until 1728. The town of Port Royal was destroyed by a great earthquake in 1692, while in 1712 and 1722 hurricanes of extreme violence carried destruction throughout the island.