82 ROYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA 
The island of Jamaica was taken possession of by Columbus for 
Spain in 1494, and was subsequently granted to his family, the vicissitudes 
of whose fortunes it would be out of place to deal with here. It was 
twice taken before its final capture during Cromwell’s time; once by 
Shirley, in 1596, according to Dallas, or 1597, according to Lucas, whose 
accuracy I am more inclined to trust, for I did not think it necessary to 
search for the official authority ; it was again taken by Jackson in 1635. 
These were, properly speaking buccaneering expeditions for the sake of 
plunder, at least they ended, if they did not begin, with that object in 
view ; for they were certainly not regularly organized attacks for the 
acquisition of territory to form part of the national domain. 
When the Spaniards took possession of the island, the native popu- 
lation is represented to have numbered about two millions, described as 
mild and inoffensive, possessed of many of the arts of civilized life and 
proficient in agriculture. After the death of the first governor, whose 
rule was mild and gentle, his successors, it is asserted and preserved in 
history, determined to clear the land of the ancient inhabitants, and 
apparently effected their object, as, according to Dallas, not a solitary 
individual of that race could be found when the island was taken posses- 
sion of by Venables and Penn in 1655. At that date there were about 
1,500 negro slaves in possession of the Spaniards, the great bulk of whom, 
with many of the dispossessed Spaniards, their former masters, took to 
the woods and mountain fastnesses, and thence carried on an irregular 
warfare, no country in the world giving greater facilities for attacks of 
this nature, being mountainous, wooded, and full of almost inaccessible 
retreats, with narrow, tortuous and rugged approaches, overlooked by 
steep wooded banks, from the shelter of which a few determined men 
could exterminate a well-appointed army without loss to themselves. 
A question arises as to the positive truth of the charges against the 
Spaniards of their ruthless and blood-thirsty slaughter of the natives, 
when it is compared with the attachment shown by the slaves for their 
Spanish masters. It is well-known that native races, of hardier frames 
than those who inhabited Jamaica, have dwindled and become extinct in 
the face of civilization, even when no ill-treatment could be alleged against 
their conquerors. From causes of this nature, therefore, the race may 
have died out without any blood-thirsty or predetermined design on the 
part of the Spaniards. It is probably impossible now to solve this ques- 
tion. The real cause of the inveterate hostility of the Maroons to the 
new owners of the island has not been so much as touched on. Some 
explanation of it may be found in the temper and disposition of the 
soldiery, who, from the first, were insubordinate and mutinous ; not only © 
disobeying their officers, but wantonly destroying the cattle, grain and 
property of the unfortunate inhabitants who had remained on their lands 
when the others fled to the woods, raising in them a spirit of hatred, and 
