Back in our sailing days with Blue Heron, 

 Ed and I had found the Bahamas to be the most delightful 

 of cruising grounds. From one-himdred-mile-long Andros 

 island to dozens of the palm-fringed, white-beached little 

 cays which dot the seventeen-thousand-square-mile area, 

 we had explored an endless succession of varied and fasci- 

 nating places. Nowhere else in this part of the world had 

 we found waters of such luscious hues. Nowhere else had 

 the beaches seemed so white, the skies so softly azure, yet 

 vibrant with the snowiest of cirrus or cumulus fluff. From 

 the northernmost point opposite central Florida to the 

 southernmost island closest to Hispaniola, a span of nearly 

 eight hundred miles, we learned that this archipelago con- 

 sists of some seven hundred islands and twenty-four hun- 

 dred cays. 



As we sailed across the shallow banks which join most 

 of these islands, divided here and there by underwater 

 canyons as much as three miles in depth, we tried to con- 

 ceive what natural phenomenon had once shaken the earth 



The Bahama Islands 105 



