CLASSIFICATION OF THE WEST INDIAN ISLANDS 21 



and others, either through sterility or ruggedness of relief, 

 are capable of supporting only inferior races. 



These various islands are classifiable, by geographic 

 position, geological composition, and economic possibili- 

 ties, into several great groups, the principal of which 

 are the Bahamas, the Antilles, the Windward or Caribbee 

 Islands, the Trinidad-Tobago group, and the keys or coral 

 reefs. 



Of these the Great Antilles are by far the most fertile, 

 diversified, and habitable, presenting greater extremes of 

 * hypsometric, climatic, and hydrographic features than all 

 the others. Their configuration and geological features 

 are of a diversified type, suggestive of continental rather 

 than insular conditions, while the other groups of West 

 Indian Islands are monotypic in character. Several of the 

 Great Antilles exceed in area all the other groups. These, 

 extending for twelve hundred miles in an east-and-west 

 line, between longitudes 65 and 85 W., are the large 

 islands of Porto Rico, Santo Domingo, Cuba, and Jamaica. 

 The Virgin archipelago, extending eastward from Porto 

 Eico to the Anegada Passage, a group which might be con- 

 fused with the Caribbean chain, is Antillean in its natu- 

 ral features. These include Crab, Culebra, Culebrita, St. 

 Thomas, St. John, Tortola, Virgin Gorda, and Anegada, 

 the largest of which is Crab Island, with an area of less 

 than twenty-five square miles. 



The Great Antilles and the shallow passages between 

 them constitute a barrier separating the Gulf and Carib- 

 bean basins, and are practically within the area of the 

 American Mediterranean, while the Bahamas and Lesser 

 Antilles make its outer rim. 



The eastern islands are composed of the Bahamas and 

 Lesser Antilles, which in natural features differ radically 

 from each other. The Bahamas, to the north of the Great 

 Antilles, rise from the shallow, submerged platform of the 

 great submarine shelf which borders the North American 



