JAMAICA—THE EARTHQUAKE 
273 
curative agencies . It is stated on very high authority that more than 
one bedridden white lady, having been shaken out of her bed, found 
again the use of her legs. 
On landing in Jamaica, Mrs. Longstaff had despatched a postcard 
to her sister, saying that it was pleasant to be once again on terra 
firma , after such a long voyage: by the irony of events, the card 
reached its destination at the same time as the news of the earth¬ 
quake. 
A little over two centuries before, on June 7th, 1692, Port Eoyal, 
the then capital of the island, over against Kingston on the opposite 
side of the harbour, was overwhelmed by an earthquake, many of its 
buildings sinking into what is now part of the harbour, with the loss, 
it is said, of some 3000 lives. In the interval no shock of any 
importance had been felt. 
Again, in 1907, the permanent disturbance of the ground was 
far greater at Port Royal than at Kingston. The massive concrete 
foundations of the batteries subsided, so that some of the guns sank 
in the sea up to their trunnions. The harbour-master reported notable 
alterations in the soundings, and when I left several palm-trees near 
the point were to be seen rising out of the sea. It is, however, note¬ 
worthy that the Government buildings at Port Royal withstood the 
shock wonderfully well; probably they were built in cement. The 
submarine cable was fractured some 16 miles away. 
A sad circumstance connected with the earthquake was the loss 
to this country of the services of one of its best officials. Sir Alex¬ 
ander Swettenham, K.C.M.G., was compelled to resign, not because 
he failed to rise to a great emergency, but simply because an in¬ 
judiciously worded letter, written under peculiarly trying circum¬ 
stances, was in some unaccountable manner made public, whereas 
the letter to which he replied has never seen the light. He was 
practically condemned unheard, to the lasting discouragement of our 
Colonial service. 
About two months after the earthquake. Bishop Joscelyne told 
me that he had been studying a report of the Diocesan Architect, 
who had been instructed to examine all the churches in the island, 
and that it would appear that the greatest destruction had been 
wrought along a line extending from Kingston in a north-north¬ 
westerly direction across the island to Port Maria. Kow this is just 
the line where an extensive earth movement might be expected, 
where contorted metamorphic strata are found, and frequent intru¬ 
sions of syenite and porphyry occur. 
Though by nature the reverse of courageous, I was, like many 
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