222 HISTORY OF THE [COOK. n. 



Port-Royal, once a place of the greatest wealth and 

 importance in the Wcist Indies, is now reduced, by 

 repeated calamities, to three streets, a few lanes, 

 and about two hundred houses. It contains, however, 

 the royal navy yard, for heaving down and refitting 

 the king's ships; the navy hospital, and barracks for 

 a regiment of soldiers. The fortifications are kept in 

 excellent order, and vie in strength, as I am told, 

 with any fortress in the king's dominions. 



Cornwall contains five parishes, three towns, and 

 six villages. The towns are Savanna-la-Mar on the 

 south side of the island, and Montego-bay and Fat- 

 mouth on the north. The former was destroyed by a 

 dreadful hurricane and inundation of the sea in 1780, 

 as I have elsewhere related. It is now partly rebuilt* 

 and may contain from sixty to seventy houses. 



Montego-bay is a flourishing and opulent town ; 



consisting of two hundred and twenty-five houses, 



I 



eluding forty-five from the public hospital), twenty-three white women, 

 aad twenty white children. Total one hundred and ninety-four. Of the 

 men, the whole number from the hospital, and a great many of the others, 

 were transient persons, chiefly discarded or vagabond seamen ; but with- 

 out making any allowance for extraordinary mortality on that account", 

 if this return, which is taken from the parochial register, be compared 

 with the bills of mortality in the manufacturing towns of England, the 

 result will he considerably in favour of Jamaica. In the large and opu- 

 lent town of Manchester, for instance, the whole number of inhabitants 

 in 1773, comprehending Salford, was 29,151, and the average number 

 of burials (dissenters included) for five preceding years was nine hun- 

 dred and fifty-eight. If the mortality in Manchester had been in no great- 

 er proportion than in Kingston, the deaths 'vouici not have exceeded Si?.. 



