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 CHAPTER XXVI.

JAMAICA.

Jamaica, the chief of the British West India Islands, was discovered by Columbus on his second voyage, in May, 1494, and was taken from Spain by the English in May, 1655, during the reign of Oliver Cromwell. It thus became an appendage to the British crown, after it had been in the possession of Spain for one hundred and forty-six years. The number of slaves on the Island at this time was about fifteen hundred.

Morgan, a notorious pirate and buccaneer, was knighted and made governor of the Island in 1670. Lord Vaughan succeeded Morgan, and under his administration the African Company was formed, and the slave-trade legalized; Africans were imported in large numbers, and the development of the natural resources of Jamaica greatly increased the wealth of the planters.

The number of slaves annually imported into the Island amounted to sixteen thousand, so that within thirty years the slave population had increased from