e with the Canadian Dominion. The authorities at Ottawa had
sent Mr. M---- to see if anything could be done, and Mr. M---- was now
on his way home, not in the best of humours with our poor relations.
'The Jamaicans did not know what they wanted,' he said. 'They were
without spirit to help themselves; they cried out to others to help
them, and if all they asked could not be granted they clamoured as if
the whole world was combining to hurt them. There was not the least
occasion for these passionate appeals to the universe; they could not at
this moment perhaps "go ahead" as fast as some countries, but there was
no necessity to be always going ahead. They had a fine country, soil and
climate all that could be desired, they had all that was required for a
quiet and easy life, why could they not be contented and make the best
of things?' Unfortunate Jamaicans! The old mother at home acts like an
unnatural parent, and will neither help them nor let their Cousin
Jonathan help them. They turn for comfort to their big brother in the
north, and the big brother being himself robust and healthy, gives them
wholesome advice.

Adventures do occasionally happen at sea even in this age of steam
engines. Ships catch fire or run into each other, or go on rocks in
fogs, or are caught in hurricanes, and Nature can still assume her old
terrors if she pleases. Shelley describes a wreck on the coast of
Cornwall, and the treacherous waters of the ocean in the English
Channel, now wild in fury, now smiling

As on the morn When the exulting elements in scorn Satiated with
destroyed destruction lay Sleeping in beauty on their mangled prey,
As panthers sleep.

The wildest gale which ever blew on British shores was a mere summer
breeze compared to a West Indian tornado. Behind all that beauty there
lies the temper and caprice, not of a panther, but of a woman. But no
tornadoes fell in our way, nor anything else worth mentioning, not even
a buccaneer or a pirate. We saw the islands which these gentry haunted,
and the headlands made memorable by their desperate deeds, but they are
gone, even to the remembrance of them. What they were and what they did
lies buried away in book mausoleums like Egyptian mummies, all as clean
forgotten as if they had been honest men, they and all the wild scenes
which these green estuaries have witnessed.

Havana figures much in English naval history. Drake tried to take it and
failed; Penn and Venables