The whites fled before the blacks in the first rush, as it has ever been. There were women and children crouching in the wet jungle at night, fearing for their lives, and because of those who feared, and those who were dead, the whites gathered themselves together, proclaimed martial law, and took ample--nay, bloody--vengeance. But martial law was not proclaimed in Kingston, and because it was not proclaimed there, Gordon, who had been born a slave, the son of his master, and had risen to a place in the Assembly, was taken out of Kingston, and after a hasty trial hanged by martial law as instigator of the rebellion on, it is said, very scanty evidence. Under that same law 439 coloured men suffered death--354 by sentence of the court-martial, and the others shot by those employed in putting down the rebellion, soldiers, sailors, and our old friends the Maroons. And after martial law ceased, 147 more were put to death, while everywhere negro houses went up in flames. In truth they put down that rebellion with a heavy hand, for the white man feared the black, who outnumbered him fifty to one. There was a storm over it in England. But it was all very well for the people there, safe in their easy-chairs, to judge those who had quenched the negro rebellion. Everyone of them would probably have been on the side of Eyre had they been in Jamaica in the month of October 1865. Many, doubtless, mourned Gordon, the champion of the black man, put to death on such insufficient evidence. His looks may belie him, but he does not look a philanthropist. All the white people on the island crowded to bid Eyre farewell when he and his family left Kingston, for they regarded the prompt measures he had taken as having saved the country from all the horrors of a black insurrection. And in speaking of “black” here I mean simply mob rule, the condition of affairs that must needs prevail when the ignorant get the upper hand. Pity is forgotten, riot and flame and bloodshed prevail. And from this Eyre undoubtedly saved Jamaica. Punch took his side and had a cartoon in which the shade of Palmerston reproaches Disraeli, and says that he would never have abandoned Eyre. “Ye savages thirsting for bloodshed and plunder, Ye miscreants burning for rapine and prey; By the fear of the lash and the gallows kept under Henceforth, who shall venture to stand in your way? Run riot, ravage, kill without pity, Let any man how he molest you beware; Beholding how hard the Jamaica Committee To ruin are trying to hunt gallant Eyre,”