A TRAGIC END.

Taranaki Herald, Volume LIV, Issue 13433, 26 March 1907, Page 3

A TRAGIC END.

• 1 At the. entrance to tho harbour of Kingston, Jamaica, the original city of Port; Royal lies fathoms deep beneath the blue and sunlit waters of the Caribbean Sea. A narrow strip of land, on which are a small settlement and a, fort is all that is left of what was once the richest and wickedest town in the West Indies. It was the resort of pirates, who resorted, there from their depredations, and made the city hideous with their . revelry. But these pirates brought great stores of their loot to the city, and its commerca.grew and flourished. Palaces a,nd churches: were built, a pirate often striving by a. rich endowment of a church to square his accounts with Heaven. Throughout the greater part of the seventeenthcentury no town ih the Western World was so magnificent as to its habits as Port Royal. Then one day in J692 the island of Jamaica wag shaken! to its j foundation, and the greater j»ar^ of Port Royal sank beneath the sea, carrying with it hundreds of its inhabitants. Towers, churches, palaces, and forts went down, many of thelu not tumbled into ruins by the .shock, but simply sinking bodily beneath the waves. On a bright ,day, sailing over the spqt where Port Royal once stood, one can look far dowrt through the clear water, and see the remains of the city still standing there on the ocean bottom, with fishes swimming about its towers, and great tropical seaweeds waving ,from its sunken walls. The negroes of Jamaica tell you that before a storm the sunken bell of the* great cathedral which went down with the city on that awful day of 1692 can be heard distinctly tolling below the waves, rung as a warning by the ghostly hands of spirits of departed buccaneers which haunt the submarine city. People who do not Relieve in ghosts, but think they have heard the tolling of the bell, say the explanation is that when the city sank, the great bell of the cathedral was not thrown from its place, but sbill hangs as it originally did. The coming storm, before it reaches Jamaica, stirs up the waters of the Carribean Sea and sends in deep waves, which roll through the sunken city and set tho bell a-lolling.

Storage accommodation for furniture and other goods is provided . by b»*ick buildings, Brougham-st., New Plymouth. The building having a raised floor all risk from, damp Is ibvinti'd. fields tiar^M or forward**! to «ny u«Wr«««**