square were paved with the old cannon balls which had become
useless on the introduction of rifled guns. The fortifications were
antiquated also, but new works were being thrown up armed with the
modern monster cannon. One difficulty struck me; Port Royal stood upon a
sandbank. In such a place no spring of fresh water could be looked for.
On the large acreage of roofs there were no shoots to catch the rain and
carry it into cisterns. Whence did the water come for the people in the
town? How were the fleets supplied which used to ride there? How was it
in the old times when Port Royal was crowded with revelling crews of
buccaneers? I found that every drop which is consumed in the place, or
which is taken on board either of merchant ship or man-of-war, is
brought in a steam tug from a spring ten miles off upon the coast.
Before steam came in, it was fetched in barges rowed by hand. Nothing
could be easier than to save the rain which falls in abundance. Nothing
could be easier than to lay pipes along the sand-spit to the spring. But
the tug plies daily to and fro, and no one thinks more about the matter.

A West Indian regiment is stationed at Port Royal. After the dockyard we
went through the soldiers' quarters and then walked through the streets
of the once famous station. It is now a mere hamlet of boatmen and
fishermen, squalid and wretched, without and within. Half-naked children
stared at us from the doors with their dark, round eyes. I found it hard
to call up the scenes of riot, and confusion, and wild excitement which
are alleged to have been witnessed there. The story that it once covered
a far larger area has been, perhaps, invented to account for the
incongruity. Old plans exist which seem to show that the end of the spit
could never have been of any larger dimensions than it is at present.
There is proof enough, however, that in the sand there lie the remains
of many thousand English soldiers and seamen, who ended their lives
there for one cause or other. The bones lie so close that they are
turned up as in a country churchyard when a fresh grave is dug. The
walls of the old church are inlaid thickly with monuments and monumental
tablets to the memory of officers of either service, young and old; some
killed by fever, some by accidents of war or sea; some decorated with
the honours which they had won in a hundred fights, some carried off
before they had gathered the first flower of fame. The costliness of
many