Is 
river was perceptibly in the ponds, shut in by the 
narrow belt of land om which Fort Augusta stands, 
the river having been at that time more of a surface 
stream and striking to the sea due South; the outlet 
curving Northward and embaying passage Fort. At 
the time of the conquest of the island by the Eng- 
lish, the river flowed in an opposite direction due 
north, coursing the foot of the Caymanas mountains, 
and making the present lagoons in the upper part 
of that plain its channel, seeking the sea southward, 
through what is now an independent stream, called 
_ the Ferry-river (Fresh river.) In 1722, in the midst 
of an extraordinary rain-storm, this channel was 
suddenly quitted, and a straight line made Hastward 
The settling waters as they reached the harbour of 
Kingston, impeded by the Easterly winds, regurgi- 
tated through the lakelet into which they gathered 
themselves, and digging out the: soil at the foot of 
the mountains made the present lagoons, increasing 
the sea-bord lands of Hunt’s Bay 3000 feet (three 
thousand.) ‘The silt and sand that form the subsoil 
of Saint Catherine’s plain abound with land shells 
of existing helices, at an elevation above the sea, 
which would imply some subsequent uprising of the: 
Island, in which the channel of the river was deepen- 
ed, and the present gully rents made. We may ap- 
ply to these changes of the river, the facts that Sir 
Charles Lyell represents attendant on the great shock 
of February, 1783. Not far from Soriano in Sicily 
innumerable fissures traversed the river plain in all 
directions, and absorbed the water until the argilla- 
