Thomas, where quarantine regulations were less strict, so
all my voyage was for nothing.
Not for over twenty years after was I to make the acquaintance of
Kingston and Port Royal and the Palisadoes, all very familiar names to
me from my constant reading of Marryat and Michael Scott.
I suppose that every one draws mental pictures of places that they
have constantly heard about, and that most people have noticed how
invariably the real place is not only totally different from the fancy
picture, but almost aggressively so.
I have already mentioned Lady Nugent's journal or "Jamaica in 1801." I
am persuaded that she must have been a most delightful little
creature. She was very tiny, as she tells us herself, and had brown
curly hair. She was a little coy about her age, which she confided to
no one; by her own directions, it was omitted even from her tombstone,
but from internal evidence we know that when her husband, Sir George
Nugent, was appointed Governor of Jamaica on April 1, 1801 (how
sceptical he must have been at first as to the genuineness of this
appointment! One can almost hear him ejaculating "Quite so. You don't
make an April fool of me!"), she was either thirty or thirty-one years
old. Lady Nugent was as great an adept as Mrs.
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