Sevilla d'Oro, the first settlement of the Spaniards in Jamaica, was founded in 1509, near the place of Columbus's shipwreck. It soon became a splendid city. Traces of pavement are still discoverable two miles distant from the church and abbey around which the town was built. In a few years, however, it disappeared as suddenly as it had arisen. Even the cause of its destruction is not certainly known. It is supposed, however, to have been a sudden irruption of the Indians. These were of the same voluptuous and gentle race which peopled the other Great Antilles, but, like them, might have been roused to temporary madness by the diabolical cruelties of the Spaniards. If so, their brief revenge availed them little, for by 1558, the sixty thousand Indians, who inhabited the island when discovered, had been extirpated, it is said, to the very last one. Near the seashore in the east of the island are some caves, in which mouldering bones of the unhappy aborigines are still found, who had taken refuge here, preferring to die of famine rather than to fall into the merciless hands of the Spaniards. After the extirpation of the Indians, the labor of African slaves was introduced. Some sugar was raised, but the greater part of the island was devoted to the raising of cattle and swine. Besides the few whites and negroes needed for this, and a small number at two or three seaports, the population was mainly gathered in the town of St. Jago de la Vega. This was built on the south side, a few miles from the sea, after the destruction of Sevilla d'Oro. At the time of the English conquest in 1655, during Cromwell's protectorate, the population consisted of twelve hundred whites and fifteen hundred negro slaves. They were summoned by the English admiral to take the oath of allegiance to England or to leave the island. But they declared that they could do neither; that they were born subjects of the King of Spain, and knew no other allegiance; and, on the other hand, that they were natives of Jamaica, and had neither friends nor kindred elsewhere. They implored him, therefore, not to exact an impossible oath, nor yet to turn them adrift in the wide world. But the misfortunes of Spanish Papists were a matter of little concern to English Puritans. They were expelled the island, but leaving their slaves in the mountain forests of the central ridge, they planted a seed which for generations bore bitter fruit to their cruel enemies. These slaves became the nucleus of those formidable Maroon communities which for generations were a terror to the island. Their masters, having conveyed their families across to Cuba, returned with a body of Spanish troops, hoping, in their turn, to expel the invaders. They intrenched themselves in a natural fastness that appeared impregnable, and an English messenger being sent to demand a surrender, the venerable governor, Don Arnoldo Sasi, it is said, ordered him to be