BERMUDA BIOLOGICAL STATIOX. 



403 



there are no streams, and most of the rain pools last but a few hours 

 even after the heaviest shower. In some localities barren tracts of 

 land are denuded, the rock cut to a sloping surface and whitewashed 

 to serve as a watershed for collecting rain water in larger quantity than 

 the roofs supply. 



In addition to the garrisons and the marines there are on the 

 islands about 18,000 people, two thirds of whom are negroes, the 

 rest whites, mostly of English extraction. There is a property quali- 

 fication for voting; the 

 proportion of whites to 

 blacks on the voting list is 

 two to one, the reverse of 

 the ratio in population. 



The cities, as I have 

 said, are but two : the 

 quaint town of St. 

 George's and the more 

 modern town of Hamilton. 

 St. George's is the more 

 interesting because of its 

 tortuous narrow streets, 

 its high garden walls and 

 its ancient architecture, 



which suggest a medieval European town (Fig. 6). 

 of government until about a hundred years ago (1815) 

 for a long time after that an importance due largely to its fine harbor. 



The visible land of Bermuda gives a very incomplete idea of the 

 shape of the submarine plateau from which it rises. If the sea were 

 to recede so that its surface was about thirty feet below its present 

 level, we should have a great oval lagoon some twenty-five miles long 

 and from twelve to fifteen wide, the rim of which would be made up 

 in part of the present land area, and for the rest of a more or less con- 

 tinuous reef of coral-covered rocks a mile or so wide (Map 1). The 

 great central basin — the great north lagoon, as I have called it — would 

 have no considerable depth — seldom more than fifteen or twenty feet of 

 water, and nowhere more than thirty — and would be studded with in- 

 numerable coral rocks and islands. Some of the deeper parts have 

 special names, as Murray Anchorage and Grassy Bay, while the 

 shallower parts are known as flats — Brackish Pond Flats, Bailey's Bay 

 Flats, etc. The passages through this rim would be only three : Hog- 

 fish Cut, Chub Cut and the Narrows or Ship Channel. The slope of 

 the sea bottom outside the rim is rather abrupt on the southeast side 

 of the oval, less so on the northwest side, and least of all at the ends, 

 as the position of the hundred fathom line shows. Beyond the hun- 

 dred fathom line the bottom slopes even more rapidly to a depth of 



Fig. 6. Ancient Street in St. George's. 

 Photograph by A. H. Verrill. 



It was the seat 

 and retained 



