Excerpt from The Cruise of the Port KingstonThe pages of this book are divided into four definite sections. Those sections deal with history, com merce, religion, and the social relations.Our Cruise had Kingston for its ultimate point. Jamaica, therefore, is the chief concern of my narrative.There have been many books about the West Indies. Taken together they represent a library of considerable size. Jamaica figures largely in all. Some of the books I have read with care, at most I have at all events glanced, and all, or nearly so, I have found worthy of attention, every writer garnering some sheaves worthy of a place in the storehouse of our accumulated information.I have not, however, chanced upon one in the whole group, telling the plain tale of life as it is, as it was presented to my own wondering eyes, as it was presented to me through the eyes of those who have made in the West Indies a life-long residence, and whose knowledge is as deep and profound as is their affection for the home of their birth or adoption.In some of the books which I critically examined, with a view of discovering if I had anything to say that had not been said a thousand times already, I remarked with some measure of astonishment how one book had been written out of others, how an accidental error in one is put forward as an historic fact to the generation next succeeding.About the PublisherForgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.comThis book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully, any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.