e party. A
yacht steamed inside the Point--long, narrow, and swift as a torpedo
boat. She carried American colours, and we heard that she was the famous
vessel of the yet more famous Mr. Vanderbilt, who was on board with his
family. Here was an excitement! The commodore was ordered to call the
instant that she was anchored. Invitations were prepared--all was
eagerness. Alas! she did not anchor at all. She learnt from the pilot
that, the small-pox being in Jamaica, if any of her people landed there
she would be quarantined in the other islands, and to the disappointment
of everyone, even of myself, who would gladly have seen the great
millionaire, she turned about and went off again to sea.

I was very happy at the commodore's--low spirits not being allowed in
that wholesome element. Decks were washed every morning as if at sea,
i.e. every floor was scrubbed and scoured. It was an eternal washing
day, lines of linen flying in the brisk sea breeze. The commodore was
always busy making work if none had been found for him. He took me one
day to see the rock spring where Rodney watered his fleet, as the great
admiral describes in one of his letters, and from which Port Royal now
draws its supply. The spring itself bursts full and clear out of the
limestone rock close to the shore, four or five miles from Kingston.
There is a natural basin, slightly improved by art, from which the old
conduit pipes carry the stream to the sea. The tug comes daily, fills
its tanks, and returns. The commodore has tidied up the place, planted
shrubs, and cleared away the bush; but half the water at least, is still
allowed to leak away, and turns the hollow below into an unwholesome
swamp. It may be a necessity, but it is also a misfortune, that the
officers at distant stations hold their appointments for so short a
term. By the time that they have learnt what can or ought to be done,
they are sent elsewhere, and their successor has to begin over again.
The water in this spring, part of which is now worse than wasted and the
rest carried laboriously in a vessel to Port Royal to be sold by measure
to the people there, might be all conducted thither by pipes at small
cost and trouble, were the commodore to remain a few years longer at the
Jamaica Station.

He is his own boatman, and we had some fine sails about the lagoon--the
breeze always fresh and the surface always smooth. The shallow bays
swarm with small fish, and it was a pretty thing to wa