33 ISLES OF SUMMER. 



It will be seen upon referring to any good map of the West 

 India Islands that an immense number of islands are distributed 

 upon a line over two thousand miles long, which trends south- 

 easterly from a point relatively near the coast of Florida, to the 

 mouth of the Orinoco Eiver in South America. Sprinkled 

 among these are many reefs, thousands of rocks, and little islets 

 which are called by the English keys and by the Spaniards cays. 

 The north-westerly portion, of this chain is composed of the 

 Bahama archipelago, and embraces thirty-nine islands, six hun- 

 dred and sixty-one keys, and two thousand three hundred and 

 eighty-seven rocks. 



This Island system constitutes a vast breakwater, and shelters 

 from the winds and waves of the wide and stormy Atlantic, the 

 Caribbean Sea and the Gulf of Mexico, which bodies of water are 

 perfectly land-locked on their other sides. Were the ocean 

 waters drawn off, we should have, in place of this island system, 

 the Bahama and Caribbean mountains, a lofty range, elevated 

 thousands of feet above the neighboring plains and valleys, 

 towering high up in the air as they now do in the water, Avith 

 large areas of high table land. The location of the islands to the 

 windward of the banks has favored the formation and growth of 

 the latter. 



The Bahama group rises out of several submerged tables of a 

 soft calcareous rock, the two largest of which arc known respec- 

 tively as the Great and Little Bahama Banks. The water upon 

 these banks attains a maximum depth of several liundred feet. 

 The Little Bank is the most northerly, and is only seventy miles 

 from the coast of Florida. It embraces a superficial area of 

 5,5G0 square miles, including 1,200 square miles of islands, and 

 has a breadth of from thirty-five to sixty miles. Its principal 

 islands are Great and Little Abaco and Grand Bahama. Tlie 

 two former are separated from each other by a narrow channel. 



