nes.

The police arrived, dispersed the mob, and shut up the market, but this
only led to their scattering throughout the city. The report that the
black boy was dead was carried into every yard, and at once swarms of
women and boys, with comparatively few men, began to smash the
Portuguese shops. The authorities did next to nothing, beyond sending
out a few special constables, armed only with sticks, to fight against
overpowering crowds better provided with weapons than themselves. The
consequence was that for two days Georgetown was in the power of
thousands of negroes, and damage resulted to the amount of nearly fifty
thousand dollars. The disturbance was finally checked by arming the
police, and issuing a proclamation that they were authorised to fire on
the rioters. Not a single shot was fired, however; the threat was quite
sufficient for the purpose.

It will be seen from these cases that of late years the negroes have
not perpetrated such massacres as once characterised their
insurrections, but the insurrection at St. Thomas-in-the-East in Jamaica
seems to show that the old spirit was not dead in 1865.

For several years previous Jamaica had been much depressed--in fact, she
had hardly begun to recover from the ruin which followed emancipation.
Then came a two years' drought, which caused some distress among the
people, who had no other means of support than what was derived from
their small provision fields. The Baptist connexion was very strong in
the island, and Dr. Underhill, the Secretary of its Missionary Society,
went out, and on his return published reports blaming the Government for
the distress, which he appears to have highly exaggerated. This tended
to produce more dissatisfaction and to give the negroes an object on
which they could vent their feelings. In one of Dr. Underhill's letters
he said the people seemed to be overwhelmed with discouragement, and
that he feared they were giving up their long struggle with injustice
and fraud in despair. Thus a feeling was produced which only required
some little incident to bring on a serious disturbance.

On the 7th of October a black man was brought up for trial before the
Custos of St. Thomas-in-the-East, when a somewhat orderly mob marched
into the town to, if possible, release the prisoner. They crowded round
the court-house and made such a disturbance that one of them was taken
in charge, only, however, to be rescued at once by his friends. Nothing