rience. Sir Alfred Jones, one of England's foremost men, and a party of eighty prominent English ladies and gentlemen had arrived a few days before on the large Direct Liner, the Port Kingston. Several hundred Americans brought to Jamaica for the winter months were in and about Kingston. Ninety miles away in Guantanamo Bay rode a fleet of white American warships. The great Englishspeaking nations were on terms of extreme friendliness, not a jar had occurred between them in many years. The situation was quite ready for the interference of nature.

Somewhere under the earth there was a great upheaval. Kingston, built of brick and old masonry, was rattled down by the surface tremor, and Americans, English and Jamaicans were left foodless, roofless and distracted when the ensuing fire had swept over the depots of provisions.

Sir Alexander Swettenham immediately began to behave like the excited foreman of a ditch gang. When, on January 17, the battle-ships Missouri and Indiana and the destroyer Whipple arrived in Kingston and began the relief of the city after having had their formal offer of aid accepted by the authorities, Governor Swettenham contrived bluntly to insult Admiral Davis and his men and requested their withdrawal. The people of the United States were amazed and angry. So were the diplomats of Great Britain, who immediately disclaimed responsibility for the governor's action. The American government hastened to accept the apology and close the incident. and close the incident. The government was ignorant of other and equally grave things that had transpired before Admiral Davis and his vessels arrived. Several hundred wounded and homeless refugees, including a number of Ameri

cans, had been hurried on board the Port Kingston Monday night. They were put off on Tuesday to make room for Sir Alfred Jones and his party of superior persons. This was but the beginning of repeated evidences of the preferment of English whites over American whites, and before the fires of Kingston were dead there was another slight which is still burning a flame of resentment and ill feeling between the English and Americans which no amount of smooth speech will quench. I was one of those who felt the treatment accorded to American ladies and gentlemen by English ladies and gentlemen, and I unhesitatingly assert that the Kingston crisis disclosed to us that in place of the affection and admiration we have been led to believe they felt for us, there is dislike, jealousy and cool contempt.

That is not all. The American fruit companies by giving Jamaica a market for her fruit saved the island from slowly dropping back into a colony of secondary importance to Great Britain. The Jamaicans, at the time of the Spanish-American war, were greatly alarmed at the discovery that their island's prosperity was dependent on the American fruit companies and decided to build up an English market. The Direct Line of which Sir Alfred Jones is the head, was subsidized $100,000 annually by the Jamaican government, and the same by the home government, to carry a stated number of bananas to England. The subsidy was begun and the English market opened up nicely. With the United Fruit Company offset by English competition the Jamaicans were very happy and very loyal until they awoke one fine morning and found that the Englishmen who had taken and were prepared to continue to take their subsidy, a large one for the colony, had sold them out to the United Fruit Company. How different things would be if we were an American colony, said the native-born Jamaicans, to which the English residents replied, Heaven forbid. Love of America, Americans and American ways has been growing steadily for years. The rude act of an English governor who had made himself unpopular overnight by bald incompetency, which deprived the sufferers of Kingston of the assistance of the American fleet, precipi

tated a pro-Americanism among Jamaican native leaders in business and politics which is yet to be heard from and is the most important thing in connection with the earthquake so far as Jamaica is concerned.

Turning from the important aspect to the incidental, some of the happenings of the days of death and panic are things that deserve to be set down in permanent form. The heroic behavior of a few men is in striking contrast with the conduct of many. Perhaps twenty native Jamaican gentlemen gave conspicuous exhibitions of bravery and self-sacrifice to which it is a pleasure to bear testimony. Three of these are Messrs. Sayles, De Valda and Barclay. Opposite the general postoffice stood the Harbour street fire station. Sayles was the highest officer in charge in that district. When the fire was advancing on the administration buildings and was about to attack the treasury, the black firemen had all deserted long before and Sayles had manned the hose alone and was waging an unequal battle when De Valda and Barclay, bent on rescue work, saw him. The three men stubbornly fought the flames with the low-pressure streams until several hundred thousand dollars' worth of property and records of incalculable value were safe from the conflagration.

A young surgeon whose name I could not learn forced his way into the heart of the devastated district when to pass through the streets was at the risk of one's life, and opened up a temporary hospital on the stoop of a house on North King street. street. He was performing operations without anæsthetics and working by the light of the fire and the uncertain gleam of a lantern when he was seen by Guy Perley Woodman and Harry Roberts, two young American tourists. They volunteered to help him, and all through that awful first night, soaked with blood, unmindful of the horrors and the dangers, they strove to save human lives.

Dr. Henry Beigel, an English physician visiting in the island, chanced to be in the heart of the city. I saw him a short time before the earthquake near the spot where more than twenty were killed, yet he escaped. With him was an American lady whom he protected by thrusting her under an archway. After

conveying her and some other bewildered refugees aboard the small steamer Naparima lying in the harbor, Doctor Beigel set out on a twenty-four hour round of mercy among the hundreds of wounded. He extemporized instruments, made splints and bandages, and wherever I went among the sufferers the next morning, they were praising him.

On the sandbar and coral reef which protects Kingston Harbor lay the beautiful cruising yacht, Prinzessin Victoria Luise. On shore, having toiled a month to get the wreck stripped and ready to float again, were Chief Officer Vahsel and a handful of picked men, all stalwart

Germans. Vahsel had succeeded to the captaincy on the death of Captain Brunswig. When the avalanche of flame was sweeping down on the docks, all the black dock laborers that could escape, fled. Only the little company of white men stood their ground. stood their ground. Captain Vahsel got out the lines of dock hose and marshaled his little band. All night long, using the engine of a small steam craft to do the pumping, they fought the flames. two hours I watched them from a point far to the eastward on the other brink of the fire and I wondered that any members of the fire department, the black constabulary or the military, could be found

to do such service. In the morning, I learned who they were and understood.

I have repeatedly mentioned the failure of the blacks to do their duty. There was one who did. I do not know his name, but the metal remnants on his charred corpse showed that he was constable No. 22. He was on duty in Harbour Street and escaped injury in the earthquake. His comrades about him fled, but he stood manfully to his duty of rescuing the wounded, and had borne many to the King Street market wharf when he made his last journey back. Those who saw him say the white tunic that covered his broad shoulders was almost entirely red with blood. The flames were swooping down on the district where hundreds had been caught under the debris and he worked like mad to get at least some of the helpless out of the way before they perished by fire. No one will ever know just what the end was. The boatmen who were taking the wounded from the wharf saw him go back to the verge of the roar

ing hell and the next morning the searchers found the charred remains of two bodies lying very close together. One of them was the heroic constable.

There were some marvelous escapes, the circumstances of which I investigated very carefully and which are almost incredible. Several children in the family of a Mrs. DeCordova were playing around. a heavy table when the earthquake shock came. The whole house was literally flattened. The collapse was complete and yet the children were absolutely unhurt. The table kept one floor and the roof from crushing them and they made their escape through a hole they broke in the roof.

John H. Field of Boston was one of the guests at the Myrtle Bank Hotel which was entirely ruined. He was in his room on the third floor in the north wing when the shock began. He could not get the door of his room open and was clinging to the knob when the building collapsed. When he recovered consciousness he was before a doorway of the other wing, fully