Towards the middle of December the Jamaica Merchant dropped anchor
in Carlisle Bay, and put ashore the forty-two surviving
rebels-convict.
If these unfortunates had imagined - as many of them appear to have
done - that they were coming into some wild, savage country, the
prospect, of which they had a glimpse before they were hustled over
the ship's side into the waiting boats, was enough to correct the
impression. They beheld a town of sufficiently imposing proportions
composed of houses built upon European notions of architecture, but
without any of the huddle usual in European cities. The spire of
a church rose dominantly above the red roofs, a fort guarded the
entrance of the wide harbour, with guns thrusting their muzzles
between the crenels, and the wide facade of Government House
revealed itself dominantly placed on a gentle hill above the town.
This hill was vividly green as is an English hill in April, and the
day was such a day as April gives to England, the season of heavy
rains being newly ended.
On a wide cobbled space on the sea front they found a guard of
red-coated militia drawn up to receive them, and a crowd - attracted
by their arrival - which in dress and manner differed little from a
crowd in a seaport at home save that it contained fewer women and a
great number of negroes.
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