186 CUBA AND PORTO PJCO 



tancr from Cape Tiburon, the western point of Haiti, and 

 is separated therefrom by one thousand fathoms of water. 

 On the south lies a wide stretch of the Caribbean Sea, two 

 thousand fathoms deep. Cape Gracias a Dios, on the 

 western coast of Honduras, the nearest Central American 

 land, is seven hundred and eighty nautical miles distant. 

 To the southwest extend the Rosalind and Pedro banks, 

 less than five hundred fathoms deep, which constitute an 

 extensive shallow submarine platform connecting Jamaica 

 with the Central American littoral. 



The island is at almost the exact center of the great 

 American Mediterranean. It lies just half-way between 

 Galveston and the mouth of the Orinoco, the southern 

 point of Florida and the northern part of South America, 

 the eastern end of the Antilles (St. Thomas) and the west- 

 ern indentations of the Gulf of Honduras, and the most 

 northern of the Bahamas and the Gulf of Atrato. This 

 position is important from political, geographic, biologic, 

 and geologic points of view, and makes the island a typical 

 base of study for one interested in Antillean problems. 



Its outline is that of an elongated parallelogram whose 

 corners have been obliquely truncated, resulting in a wide 

 oblong area from whose east and west ends project two 

 broad peninsulas. Its extreme length is one hundred and 

 forty-four miles; its greatest width is forty-nine miles; 

 its least width, twenty-one and a half miles, between 

 Kingston and Annatto Bay. Its longest axis lies in an 

 east-and-west direction. The area is 4207 square miles- 

 less than one tenth that of Cuba, and five hundred square 

 miles greater than that of Porto Rico. 



From the sea Jamaica appears as a group of mountain 

 summits rising sharply above the expanse of water in a 

 tangled mass of forest-covered land, apparently without 

 systematic types of relief by which its configuration can 

 be classified. The higher summits of the eastern end are 

 usually veiled in clouds, so that only their lower slopes 

 are visible. The mists are apparently forever present in 



