nstances in Calabria and elsewhere of
slides of land on which the houses have still remained standing; and it
is possible that such may have been the case at Port Royal. The fact at
least of submergence is unquestionable, for I was informed by the late
Admiral Sir Charles Hamilton that he frequently saw the submerged houses
of Port Royal in the year 1780, in that part of the harbor which lies
between the town and the usual anchorage of men-of-war. Bryan Edwards
also says, in his history of the West Indies, that in 1793 the _ruins_
were visible in clear weather from the boats which sailed over
them.[708] Lastly, Lieutenant B. Jeffery, R. N., tells me that, being
engaged in a survey between the years 1824 and 1835, he repeatedly
visited the site in question, where the depth of the water is from four
to six fathoms, and whenever there was but little wind perceived
distinct traces of houses. He saw these more clearly when he used the
instrument called the "diver's eye," which is let down below the ripple
of the wave.[709]

At several thousand places in Jamaica the earth is related to have
opened. On the north of the island several plantations, with their
inhabitants, were swallowed up, and a lake appeared in their place,
covering above a thousand acres, which afterwards dried up, leaving
nothing but sand and gravel, without the least sign that there had ever
been a house or a tree there. Several tenements at Yallows were buried
under land-slips; and one plantation was removed half a mile from its
place, the crops continuing to grow upon it uninjured. Between Spanish
Town and Sixteen-mile Walk, the high and perpendicular cliffs bounding
the river fell in, stopped the passage of the river and flooded the
latter place for nine days, so that the people "concluded it had been
sunk as Port Royal was." But the flood at length subsided, for the river
had found some new passage at a great distance.

_Mountains shattered._--The Blue and other of the highest mountains are
declared to have been strangely torn and rent. They appeared shattered
and half-naked, no longer affording a fine green prospect, as before,
but stripped of their woods and natural verdure. The rivers on these
mountains first ceased to flow for about twenty-four hours, and then
brought down into the sea, at Port Royal and other places, several
hundred thousand tons of timber, which looked like floating islands on
the ocean. The trees were in general barked, most of