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blasting them against my face and forehead, singing, howHng, 

 whistKng. I could escape the sun by hiding beneath the trees 

 or crawling in the shade of boulders; the wind granted no 

 amnesty. Eddying, swirling, it worried me endlessly; drifting 

 sand covered my bags when I set them down, the tiny grains 

 filtered into my food, making it gritty; my clothes flapped cease- 

 lessly, breaking my rest, irritating me during the day. Not for 

 an hour, not for so much as a minute, did it slacken. In my hut 

 back in Mathewtown I had been conscious of the trades in a 

 vague sort of way: they whistled through the palmettos, and 

 rustled the grasses in the clearing, but behind the snug walls of 

 my home the wind did not exist; I could sleep, eat and live un- 

 molested. The clearing was in a semi-vacuum, its position in the 

 lee of the island sheltered it from all but the most violent gusts. 

 The trades roared overhead and then passed on out to sea again. 



Inagua lies squarely in the path of the trades. These winds 

 at times blow incessantly for weeks, at others fall to near calm 

 or gentle zephyrs, more often they are vigorous and galelike. 

 Usually they increase and decrease in intensity, slowly building 

 up velocity over several days, holding it for long or short periods 

 and then gradually waning again. My exploration of the island 

 was in a period of increasing intensity. 



About dawn I passed the last of the lee. From Polacca Point 

 the coast swings southwards in a long sweeping bay known as 

 the Bight of Ocean. Somewhere in the center of this was a 

 fabulous place known as Babylon which I had been told I could 

 not pass. I was curious to see it. Polacca Point was visible long 

 before I reached it by the curtain of white spray surging up 

 from the windward side. There was no sheltering reef to guard 

 the coast from the onslaughts of the huge swells that were 

 running; the bottom dropped straight down for fifty or sixty 

 feet; the water hit the blank wall with nothing to slow its im- 

 pact; white sheets of dazzling foam shot skywards and were 



