470 
PROCEEDINGS OF SECTION E. 
author may be supposed to know more than his hearers, or more at 
least than most of his hearers ; that it should be one which can to 
some extent be adequately dealt with in the limits of an ordinary 
paper ; and that it should possess some features of interest, and perhaps 
of instruction, to those who are present. I think the two first condi- 
tions are adequately fulfilled in tin’s paper. Of the third condition I 
cannot be a competent judge, for more than five years of my life were 
so entirely bound up with the fortunes of Jamaica and its people that 
everything connected with the island possesses for me a high interest; 
but I am fain to think that a brief account may not be undeserving of 
your attention. Perhaps, indeed, the very distance of Jamaica from 
this part of the world, and the very different circumstances of ller 
Majesty’s West Indian and Australian possessions, may give an 
interest to my subject. I fear, however, that my account will go 
somewhat beyond the limits of what is usually understood by geography, 
but not beyond geography in its true and largest sense as a science 
“ which treats of the world and its inhabitants — a description of the 
earth or a portion of the earth, including its structure, features, 
products, political divisions, and the people by whom it is inhabited.” 
Many persons who have not had occasion to visit the West Indies 
or to st udy the relative positions of the islands look upon them as one 
group, but this is a mistake. The islands which extend in a crescent 
shape, beginning in the south with Trinidad, close to the coast of Central 
America and just north of the 10th degree of north latitude, to the 
Virgin Islands, between the 18th and 19th degrees of latitude, are called 
the Lesser Antilles ; and of the principal islands of this group eight are 
British and two are French, while the Danes and Dutch have posses- 
sion of smaller islands. Jamaica, which is distant nearly 1,000 miles 
from the nearest of these islands, and is closer to the North American 
Continent than any of them, belongs to the group called the Greater 
Antilles. Exclusive of some small islands, this latter group consists, 
besides Jamaica, of Cuba, which belongs to Spain, with an area of 
41,600 square miles and a population of 1,631,000; Haiti, which is 
divided into two negro republics— that of Haiti, and that of Santa 
Domingo — the first with an area of 10,200 square miles, and Santa 
Domingo with an area of 18,000 square miles, each having an 
estimated population of about 600,000 inhabitants ; and Porto Rico, 
which belongs to Spain, and has an area of 3,550 square miles, and a 
population of 807,000. Jamaica, the remaining island of the group, 
has an area of about 4,200 square miles, and a population of about 
650,000 souls. 
Jamaica* is not only, from a geographical point of view, quite 
separate from the other British West Indian Islands, hut what I 
may call its political circumstances are quite different, owing to its 
proximity to large islands and to Central American States, in which 
sedition and even revolution are of common occurrence. Trinidad, of 
all the Lesser Antilles, is the only island that has occasional difficulty 
of a somewhat similar kind, as it is within actual sight of the large 
Republic of Venezuela. 
Jamaica is 144 miles long, and about 50 miles across in its 
broadest part. Its eastern coast is 100 miles from Haiti, and its 
northern coast is 90 miles from Cuba. The island runs in length 
nearly east and west, and extends from 76 degrees 11 minutes to 
