FLORA OF NEW PROVIDENCE AND ANDROS 191 



banks, which are fringed by low islands forming a crescent with an 

 open lagoon or flat between its horns; next, Salt Cay Bank, which 

 from its structure holds a position intermediate between the group 

 of sunken banks like the Navidad and that resembling Caicos Bank, 

 and finally, such composite banks as the Little Bahama and Great 

 Bahama banks with the characteristics of a combination of banks 

 resembling all the others." l 



The Little Bahama Bank, lying in 26 to 27 ° north latitude, 

 is the most northerly. From it rise the islands of Great Bahama 

 and Abaco with a number of small cays. The Little Bahama Bank 

 is separated from the Great Bahama Bank lying south of it by the 

 Northeast and Northwest Providence channels, which are from 

 twenty to thirty miles wide and have a depth of from 500 to 2000 

 fathoms. 



"The Great Bahama Bank is irregularly V-shaped and has an 

 extent of four hundred miles from northwest to southeast and is 

 about two hundred and fifty miles in its greatest width." * 



The water on the bank is usually only three or four fathoms 

 deep, but it is indented on the north by a tongue of the ocean which 

 extends nearly two thirds across it and has a depth of from 

 700 to 1200 fathoms. Along the western edge of this tongue 

 of ocean lies Andros, while New Providence is on the eastern 

 side, twenty-five miles or more distant. On the eastern border 

 of Great Bahama Bank lie the long narrow islands known 

 as Eleuthera, Cat Island, Exuma, and Long Island, the first two 

 being separated from the third by another indentation in the bank 

 from the south known as Exuma Sound. To the southeast of Cat 

 Island are the isolated islands of Rum Cay and San Salvador, or 

 Watlings Island, while east of the southern end of the Great Bahama 

 Bank is the much smaller bank on which are situated Crooked, 

 Acklin, and Fortune islands. Still farther southeast lie Mariguana, 

 the Caicos Bank and Islands and Turks Islands, while the entirely 

 isolated island of Inagua is off to the west. Inagua lies in a latitude 

 of about 21 and is the most southerly of the Bahamas. It is about 

 fifty miles from the east end of Cuba and about sixty miles north of 

 the western end of Haiti. From both islands it is separated by water 

 over 1500 fathoms in depth. 



1 "A Reconnoissance of the Bahamas and of the Elevated Reefs of Cuba in the 

 Steam Yacht Wild Duck, January to April, 1893," Alexander Agassiz. 



