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throughout all Jamaica. A great part of them was 

 swallowed up ; frequently houses, people and trees at one 

 gap, in the room of which there afterwards appeared u 

 large pool of water. This when dried up, discovered 

 nothing but sand, without any mark that house of tree 

 had been there. Two thousand people lost their lives ^ 

 had it been in the night, few would have escaped. A 

 thousand acres of land were sunk : one plantation was 

 removed half a mile from its place. Yet the shocks 

 were most violent among the mountains. Not far from 

 Yali-house^ part of a mountain, after it had made several 

 leaps, overwhelmed a whole family, and great part 

 of a plantation, though a mile distant. A large moun- 

 tain near Port Morant, about a da^'s journey over, was 

 quite swallowed up, and m the place where it stood, re- 

 mained a lake, four or five leagues over. Vast pieces of 

 mountains, with all the trees thereon, falling together in 

 a confused manner, stopped up most of the rivers, till 

 swelling abroad, they made themselves new channels, 

 tearing up every tiling that opposed their passage, carry- 

 ing with them into the sea, such prodigious quantities of; 

 timber, that they seemed like moving islands. In Li^ua- 

 nia the sea, retiring from the land, left the ground dry 

 for two or three hundred yards. But it returned in a 

 minute or two> and overflowed a great-part of the shore, 

 Those who escaped from the town, got on beard the 

 ships in the harbour, where many continued two months, 

 the shocks all the time being so violent, that they durst 

 not come on, shore. The noisome vapours occasioned 

 a general sickness, which- swept away three thousand 

 of those that were left." 



The following account of this memorable event is- 

 given by the Hector of Por^Royal : 



" On Wednesday, June 7, 1 had been reading- prayers, 

 (which I have read every lay since I came to Port- 

 Royal, to keep up some shew of- religion among a most 

 ungodly people) and- was gone to the President of ths 

 Council. We had scarce dined, when I felt the ground 

 heave and roll under me. I said, " Sir, what is this T- 



