32 BULLETIN : MUSEUM OF COMPARATIVE ZOOLOGY. 



The condition of the western face of Eleuthera shows admirably the 

 method of erosion, disintegration, and denudation which has taken place 

 on the inner face of an island facing the great bank of which the part now 

 worn away must once have been the summit surface. 



Going south from the Glass Window, we keep sufficiently within sight 

 of the land to read, as we pass along, its former history. About two 

 miles south from tlie " Cove," where we anchored, begin a series of ver- 

 tical cliffs, which continue almost uninterruptedly as far as Hatchet 

 Point. Tiiey are full of holes and of small caverns, ribbed with stalac- 

 tites, giving the face of the cliffs, not only here Init everywhere nearly 

 in the Ijahamas, the appearance of basaltic rocks, more or less eaten 

 away at tlie base. The cliff's are the remnants of the headlands, which 

 have been worn away first, leaving only here and there a slope reaching 

 from the inner hills to the shore. All along the west coast there is excel- 

 lent sponging and fishing for large conchs. We found conch-shells and 

 fragments of corals thrown up fully twenty-five feet above high-water 

 mark, and lighter fragments of shells and dried stenr^ of Gorgonia^p blown 

 by the winds to the highest points of the hills on each side of the' Glass 

 Window. 



Dana describes the surface of Metia, an elevated coral island which 

 presents, I should say, much the same honeycombed appearance so char- 

 acteristic of the more exposed and weathered islands and islets of tlie 

 Bahamas, especially as seen at the Glass AVindv:»w (see Plate XXX.). Its 

 shore cliffs and rounded summits present a striking resemblance to some 

 of the Bahamas. Compare the figure given by Dana (Corals and Coral 

 Islands, page 193) with the figures I have given of tlie Bahama a^olian 

 hills and cliffs. , 



All the way from Hatchet Point to Governor Harbor (Plate X. Fig. 2) 

 the same succession of vertical clili's continues, with the same undulat- 

 ing, rolling teolian lulls, perhaps a little lower behind the shore cliffs than 

 farther north. To the south of Governor Harbor the ground falls off" a 

 good deal to Savanna SotukI, and tliere are fewer vertical clili's along the 

 re.st of the shore of Eleuthera extending to I'owell Point, ^yhile coast- 

 ing along Eleuthera we were taken at a good rate by a fresh northwester, 

 which stirred up the bottt>m very extensively, and the whole sea was one 

 mass of milky water carrying a very perceptible amount of particles of 

 lime in suspension, derived both from the bottom and from tlie shores. 

 There is to the westward of the island extending from tlie Cove to a few 

 miles north of Tari)on Point a marked depression in the general level of 

 the bank, varying from four to six fathoms in depth, with an average 



