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A terrible earthquake overwhelmed Port Royal and "in ten minutes threw down all the churches, dwelling-houses and sugar-works in the island. Two-thirds of Port Royal were swallowed up by the sea, all the forts and fortifications demolished and great part of its inhabitants miserably knocked on the head or drowned."
The large building yards of Greenock bring into the town sums of money which, but for these yards, would go elsewhere, and deprive the community of many comforts, not to say luxuries. They are the means of carrying on the import and export trade of this thriving town in a way that could not otherwise have been done; famous as this place is for shipbuilding, spinning, and its splendid sugar-works.
Higher up stand the sugar-works of Amelia’s Waard, solitary and abandoned; and after passing these there is not a ruin to inform the traveller that either coffee or sugar has been cultivated.
The townlet, capital of the 'comarca, fronted by its little Alameda and a strip of beach upon which I should prefer to debark, shows a tall factory-chimney, noting the sugar-works of Wilhabram Bros. The guide-books mention iron pyrites and specular iron in small quantities behind Ponta do Sol.
Below in the valley were the sugar-works; and beyond this half-natural, half-artificial scene rose, some mile off, the lowering wall of the yet untouched forest. It had taken only fifteen years, but fifteen years of hard work, to create this paradise. And only the summer before, all had been well-nigh swept away again. During the great drought the fire had raged about the woods.
They rushed away to the sugar-works, yelling: "Git bagasse foo bu'n him out!" The household loaded all the firearms in the house, filled all vessels with water, and piled blankets here and there to fight fire. Then they made merry. The wife played her piano till after midnight. Whether moved by this show or not, the blacks failed to return, and next day the family escaped to the schooner.
They have, as well, I understand, as the gentlemen of Martinique, discovered the worth of the 'division of labour. Throughout the West Indies the planter is usually not merely a sugar-grower, but a sugar-maker also. He requires, therefore, two capitals, and two intellects likewise, one for his cane-fields, the other for his 'ingenio, engine-house, or sugar-works.
Finding at length the unprofitable way in which the West Indian planters conducted their concerns, he returned to the East Indies in 1776, and established sugar-works at Bencoolen on his own account.
Ere the last farewell was given, one of our party pointed to a sight which I never saw before, and perhaps shall never see again. It was the Southern Cross. Just visible in that winter season on the extreme southern horizon in early morning, it hung upright amid the dim haze of the lowland and the smoke of the sugar-works.
Higher up stand the sugar-works of Amelia's Waard, solitary and abandoned; and after passing these there is not a ruin to inform the traveller that either coffee or sugar have ever been cultivated.
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