[C] Old Port-Royal contained more than 1500 buildings, and these for the most part large and elegant. This unfortunate town was for a long time reckoned the most considerable mart of trade in the West Indies. It was destroyed on the 17th of June, 1692, by an earthquake which in two minutes sunk the far greater part of the buildings; in which disaster near 3000 people lost their lives.--_Freneau's note._ [D] A Battery so called, on the side of the harbour opposite to Port-Royal.--_Freneau's note._ [280] First published in the 1788 edition, the text of which I have followed. For the 1809 edition Freneau made numerous verbal changes. On an average, he changed a word in every line. No poem of Freneau's shows more clearly his peculiar mania for revision. In the 1795 edition the title is "Port Royal," in the 1809 edition it is "Written at Port Royal, in the Island of Jamaica--September, 1784." [281] The edition of 1809 adds: "Here _for their crimes_ (_perhaps_) in ages fled, Some vengeful fiend, familiar with the dead--" [282] The edition of 1809 adds: "Of ghosts all restless!--(cease they to complain-- More than a century should relieve their pain--)." A footnote adds the comment: "A superstition, at present, existing only among the ignorant." [283] "Handsome _Yankee_ maids."--_Ed. 1809._ [284] The edition of 1809 adds: "That gloomy race lead up the evening dance, Skip on the sands, or dart the alluring glance: Sincere are they?--no--on your gold they doat-- And in one hour--for that would cut your throat. All is deceit--half hell is in their song And from the silent thought?--_You have done us wrong!_" [285] This line and the fifteen following omitted from the later editions. TO SIR TOBY[286] A Sugar Planter in the interior parts of Jamaica, near the City of San Jago de la Vega, (Spanish Town) 1784 "_The motions of his spirit are black as night, And his affections dark as Erebus._" --SHAKESPEARE.