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And, "That whatsoever other favour or immunity or protection shall or may conduce to the welfare, strength, and improvement of the said island, shall from time to time be continued and applied thereunto.

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M. Houel, unable to persuade M. Boisseret to sell his part of the island of Guadaloupe, returned to that island with a determination to be master of the whole; and soon after his landing, he sent his brother, the Chevalier Houel, off the island, and he returned to France. Houel then proceeded to sell all the effects of his brother-in-law Boisseret, notwithstanding the remonstrances of his son: these effects sold for a million five hundred and twentynine thousand pounds of tobacco, and were purchased by M. Houel's partizans. Some of his nephew's menaces, for unjustly selling his father's property, being reported to M. Houel, he sent the young man off the island.

The population of Grenada, this year, amounted to 300 persons, under the command of M. Vauminier: every house almost was a little fort, capable of resisting the incursions of the savages.

The 15th of June, M. de la Vigne sailed from Nantz, with an expedition to establish a colony near the river Oürabiche: they arrived at Martinico the 19th of July, where they remained until the 23d of October, and then sailed, without any person on board that knew the coast. They at last determined to land and build a fort at the entrance of the river Ouanatigo, upon a hill on a peninsula: they named the fort St. Anne: it was surrounded with palisades, and defended by four guns and two peterardes. De Vigne, having left his colonists upon good terms with the natives, returned to St. Christopher's in December.

The colonists were soon afterwards attacked by the Spaniards, and deserted by the natives; and though they succeeded in defending themselves, they resolved to abandon the country some got to Tobago and others to St. Domingo; and thus ended the attempt of the Company of Terra Firma to make a settlement on the main land!

There was a remarkable mortality, this year, among the Gosiers or Pelicans: all the shores of the islands of St. Lucie, St. Vincent's, Bequia, and all the Grenadines, were edged with their bodies.

Du Tertre, tom. i. pp. 549. 482. tom. ii. pp. 41. 275.

The use of money was not yet introduced into the French islands: all the commerce was carried on by exchange, and the produce of the country was given to the merchants in lieu of what they imported. When a vessel arrived, the captain waited upon the governor for permission to dispose of his cargo, who immediately sent the judge, the officer of the guard, and some other officers, on board to set a tax upon all the articles; a list of which, and of the prices of the different articles was affixed to the door of the warehouse; and the price, thus once settled, could not afterwards be altered.

The Dutch were the principal traders to the French islands. The army at Jamaica gained some trifling success against the Spanish Negroes in the interior; but towards the close of the year forty soldiers were cut off, as they were rambling near their quarters.

The Council of State in England voted that 1000 girls, and as many young men, should be listed in Ireland, and sent over to Jamaica.

In November, Cromwell ordered the Scotch government to apprehend all known, idle, masterless robbers and vagabonds, male and female, and transport them to that island: he promised Fortescue eight more ships of war, from thirty to forty guns, a reinforcement of soldiers, and twelve months' provisions for the army. He dispatched Mr. Gookin to New England, with proffers of great encouragement to all who would settle in Jamaica; and he appointed Major-General Sedgewicke to take the command of the island, in conjunction with Goodson and Serle.

Sedgewicke arrived about the end of the year, and says, "For the army I found them in as sad, as deplorable and distracted a condition, as can be thought of. As to the commanders, some have quitted the island, some have died, some are sick, and others in indifferent health. Of the soldiers many are dead, and their carcases lying unburied every where in the highways and among the bushes! Many that are alive appear like ghosts; and as I went through the town, they lay groaning and crying out, Bread for the Lord's sake!' The truth is, I saw nothing but symptoms of necessity and desolation."

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He found the shore strewed with stores, "exposed to ruin ;" and says a small number of men might in a few days have erected a house sufficient to have secured the whole. In a subsequent letter to Thurlow, he says, "Should I give you a character of the dispositions and qualifications of our army in general (some few particulars excepted), I profess my heart would grieve to write, as it doth to think of them. I believe they are not to be paralleled in the whole world; a people so lazy and idle, as it cannot enter

Du Tertre, tom. ii. pp. 460, 461. Long's Jamaica, vol. ii. p. 338.

into the heart of any Englishman that such blood should run in the veins of any born in England - so unworthy, slothful, and basely secure; and have, out of a strange kind of spirit, desired rather to die than live! A round tower of stone was intended to be built within the fortification at Port Royal, but it is difficult to get either masons or materials, except stone; the army protesting they could not spare thirty men to make a little lime! The work, therefore, such as it is, was wholly performed by the seamen. As for planting, there is little done; and the truth is, I believe nothing more will be done in it, though they have had all the intreaties and encouragement that were possibly in our power. The commanders and officers allege that the soldiers will not plant, but still stand gaping to go off the island as after a gaol delivery, and you may be confident there will be little done in that way by this sort of people."

A

party of men sent in quest of horses, thirty miles inland, caught forty horses and four women: the men escaped.

Cromwell wrote to the commander-in-chief, and strongly recommended him to form a good body of horse. "As we have cause (he said) to be humbled for the reproof God gave us at St. Domingo, upon the account of our sins, as well as others so truly, upon the reports brought hither to us of the extreme avarice, pride and confidence, disorders and debauchedness, prophaneness and wickedness, commonly practised among the army, we cannot only bewail the same, but desire that all with you may do so, and that a very special regard may be had so to govern in time to come, as that all manner of vice may be thoroughly discountenanced and severely punished; and that such a frame of government may be exercised, that virtue and goodness may receive due encouragement. And whereas it is too apparent, that a want of due discipline in the army, and timely and orderly taking care in providing food and refreshment for it, of such flesh and other things as are upon the island itself, hath been a great occasion of the sickness and other distempers which have fallen among them, we direct you to put the same in an orderly way, as well for the taking, killing, preserving, and dressing of flesh, as for sowing and planting of such seeds and other things as will produce bread and other food, which will be a means of restoring and preserving the health of the soldiers, and lay a good foundation for easing the extraordinary charge which the commonwealth is at, of sending provisions from home to a place which abounds in all things."

Twenty of Colonel Buller's regiment, when their ration was reduced to half a pound of bread a-day, revolted, and left their quarters they were pursued and taken prisoners. Three of the leaders were executed, and the rest pardoned.

Long's Jamaica, vol. i. pp. 255, 256, 257.

Major-General Sedgewicke died upon the 24th of June, just after receiving the Protector's order to take upon him the sole and supreme command.

Major-General Boteler, in a letter to Secretary Thurlow, makes humble motion, "that he would please to help him to à vent for those idle rogues he had secured for the present, some in one country, some in another, being not able to find security for their peaceable demeanour, not fit to live on this side some or other of our plantations." He adds, that he could help Thurlow to two or three hundred at twenty-four hours' warning, and the countries would think themselves well rid of them.

Mr. Long says, "considering, therefore, the several events attending the first settlement of Jamaica, it may be reckoned a fortunate circumstance, that when, by the licentious and refractory proceedings of many in the army, the affairs of the colony wore no very promising aspect, and that the business of planting did not proceed with that rapidity so conspicuous in other islands, the privateering trade at length opened a channel by which these disorderly spirits were driven into an occupation perfectly well suited to them. In the acquisition of wealth to themselves, which they dissipated in riot and debauchery, they contributed more largely than they were aware, to the prosperity of that island, and the emolument of the mother country."

Cromwell sent instructions to the commissioners at Jamaica, stating, that he had granted, by patent under the Great Seal, to Martin Noell, merchant of London, twenty thousand acres of land, parcel of the said island, with several privileges, to be enjoyed by him and his heirs; and authorizing the commissioners to admit any other people of the commonwealth, or the dominions thereof, who were Protestants, to inhabit any part of the island upon the same terms granted to Mr. Noel.

And to cause the terms and conditions to be published in the islands and plantations of the English in America, and to use such other means as were necessary for inciting people to come and plant upon the island.

The conditions granted to Mr. Noel, Mr. Long says, are not to be found among the records in the island, the oldest of them not reaching so far back by many years.

Governor Searle, in his return of the military establishment at Barbadoes, taken the 6th November, 1656, and sent to SecretaryThurlow, states,

Four regiments of foot, consisting of
Eight troops of horse -

Total

4500 men.

800

5300

Colonel Brayne arrived in December at Jamaica, as commander-in-chief, with 1000 recruits. Eight hundred and thirty, under Colonel Humphreys, landed a short time before, and 1500 collected in the Windward Islands, under the command of Stokes, the governor of Nevis. Brayne found every thing in the utmost confusion: the soldiers had destroyed all sorts of provisions and cattle — nothing but ruin attended them wheresoever they went; they would neither dig nor plant, and were determined rather to starve than work! Misery and disease had made dreadful havoc: for some time 140 men died each week, and forty soldiers who were rambling from their quarters were cut off by the Negroes, who had fled to the woods!

Jeremie Deschamps, Sieur de Moussac et Du Rausset, was appointed governor and lieutenant-general for the King in Tortuga and its dependencies, in December, 1656.

The island of Guadaloupe was desolated by a tremendous hurricane - most of the houses destroyed — all the domestic animals killed and all the plantations laid waste: every vessel at anchor in the roads was wrecked, and most of their crews drowned!

A general insurrection took place among the Negroes at Capsterre, Guadaloupe: they were headed by two Angola Blacks, named Pedre and Jean le Blanc. Their plan was to massacre all the male Whites, and to elect two kings from any among themselves, one to rule in Capsterre, and the other in Basse Terre. The Negroes at Basse Terre were to have joined ; but coming from a different part of Africa, they were hostile to the Angolians, and failed to keep the appointment. The Angola Negroes began without them, fled to the woods, and for fifteen days continued their depredations, until M. Despinay, a Walloon gentleman, with twenty chosen men, and some Brazilian slaves, pursued them, and having killed the King of Capsterre, Jean le Blanc, and taken from them eight women and three children, they separated; and the other white inhabitants, encouraged by this success, joined in the pursuit, and captured almost the

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