CHAP.

XIX.

1GD2.

Earth-quake atPortRoyal.

Distressin Eug-laml.

10G HISTORY OB' BKGIAKD.

sterling. * About the same time a younger adventurer, destinedto equal or surpass Bart, Du GuayTrouin, was entrusted withthe command of a small armed vessel. The intrepid boy, — forhe was not yet twenty years old, — entered the estuary of theShannon, sacked a mansion in the county of Clare, and didnotreimbark till a detachment from the garrison of Limerickmarched against him. **

While our trade was interrupted and our shores me-naced by these rovers, some calamities which no humanprudence could have averted increased the public ill humour.An earthquake of terrible violence laid waste in less thanthree minutes the flourishing colony of Jamaica. Wholeplantations changed their place. Whole villages were swal-lowed up. Port Royal, the fairest and wealthiest city whichthe English had yet built in the New World, renownedfor its quays, for its warehouses, and for its stately streets,which were said to rival Cheapside, was turned into a mass ofruins. Fifteen hundred of the inhabitants were buried undertheir own dwellings. The effect of this disaster was severelyfelt by many of the great mercantile houses of London andBristol.***

A still heavier calamity was the failure of the harvest. Thesummer had been wet all over Western Europe. Those heavyrains which had impeded the exertions of the French pioneersin the trenches of Namur had been fatal to the crops. Old menremembered no such year since 1648. No fruit ripened. Theprice of the quarter of wheat doubled. The evil was aggravatedby the state of the silver coin, which had been clipped to such

* See Bart’s Letters qf Nobility, and the Paris Gazettes of the autumnof 1692.

** M^moires de Du Guay Trouin.

*** London Gazette, Aug. 11. 1692; Evelyn’s Diary, Aug. 10.; MonthlyMercury for September; A Full Account of the late dreadful Earthquake atPort Royal in Jamaica, licensed Sept. 9. 1092.

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