stayed until the crews were short of provisions and they had brought up 26 tons of silver. Then a sloop from Bermuda came to their aid with foodstuffs, but the secret was out, and while the foodless ships sailed away for home laden with their booty that sloop went back to Bermuda and talked, and many sloops and divers were sent down and a vast quantity more of plate and money was taken up, so that when the second fleet came from England most of what was left of that rich find was dispersed among people who certainly had as good a right to it as the first comers. After that it became quite fashionable to take out patents to hunt for wrecks, and though Sloane says much money was made on that first wreck, much more was lost in the projects than ever was taken out of the sea. Evidently to Hans Sloane his expedition to Jamaica loomed large, for it was years after he left it that his last volume on the subject was published. That voyage must have been _the_ event of a fairly full life. After the death of the Duke of Albemarle, who certainly seems to have been a shining example of how not to live in the tropics, Hans Sloane, in the train of the Duchess, left Jamaica on the 16th March 1689, and did not arrive off the Lizard till the 29th May. How far off Jamaica was in those days we may judge when we are told that the fleet was afraid to go into Plymouth because they did not know whether England was at war or not. At last they picked up a fishing smack and heard that James II. had been deposed, that William III. reigned in his stead, and that the Channel was full of French privateers. Before I leave the subject of Jamaica's first historian, I must tell a strange story that was told me by a friend. He told his experience reluctantly, he does not believe in the supernatural, and he is quite sure there must be some perfectly natural explanation of the incident could he but find it. There was something wrong with his knee and he was afraid he was going to be a cripple for life, for no doctor could find out what was wrong. He used to struggle from his bed on to a board and his servants carried him that way to a sofa, where he spent his daylight hours. So it went on from day to day and he had little hope of getting better. At night his black manservant slept on the floor close to his bed, so as to be near in case he should want any help. Naturally, being a young and active man and not given to books, he was much depressed at the outlook.