I shall neither attempt to describe what I felt nor what I imagined as we approached Kingston from Port Royal: my whole mind was bent on getting away from the place as soon as possible. I had no reason for this impatience, but it belonged to the condition of my feelings, and the courteous reader may, perhaps, guess at the impulses that moved me.

An accident as we entered the harbour had nearly been fatal to the packet. It was night, and the breeze blew strong off the land, in a direction by which she was obliged to go so close to the shore that she grounded for a few minutes. Our anxiety occasioned by this accident did not, however, last long, though at the time it was alarming. But I was less interested in the consequences than by the appearance of the land around.

I had somehow supposed that the country was widely and richly cultivated. I expected no gentlemanly residences nor pleasant villas, but lively rural scenery filled my imagination. Judge then of my disappointment, when, instead of an open and gay country, I beheld only patches of cultivation, distant mountains, and a rankness of vegetable production every where. I had prepared myself for a luxuriant profusion, and counted on green and tufty trees and shrubs thickly clothed with foliage, but I was not in expectation of seeing that, around the capital, cultivation bore a small proportion to the wild affluence and native vesture of the soil. I do not exaggerate my feelings when I say the disappointment was painful, and when instead of the rich and beautiful land I had been taught to expect, I saw only a savage woody country, and in the habitations of man only the expedients of a temporary possession.