40 iSLES OF SUMMER. 



they lie together, as if all were once part of a greater Florida or 

 soutii-castern prolongation of the continent. The north-western 

 and sontli-western trends, characterizing the great featnres of 

 the American continent, rnn throngli the whole like a warp and 

 woof structure, binding them togetlier in one system." 



To the author of this book it seems probal)le, from a simple 

 examination of a good West India map, tliat the subsidence ex- 

 tended in tlie same general direction to Soutli America, a dis- 

 tance of some fifteen hundred miles furtlier. AVliile the crust 

 of the earth was being elevated, depressed and rolled "like a 

 scroll,"' it would have been a slight matter to have enlarged the 

 area of disturbance to the extent supposed. 



In the shallow water, upon the mountain tops, tlie corals 

 planted their colonies, and these islands, and banks, these coral 

 rocks and coral sands, entirely destitute as they are of primitive 

 or volcanic rocks, and of fossil remains, are their monuments. 

 Geologically speaking the Bahamas are of a very recent age. 

 This is indicated by the fact that their hammocks and woods are 

 almost destitute of soil, yet the growth of coral islands is exceed- 

 ingly slow. The coral groves and bowers are individually of 

 small extent, very unlike the "illimitable forests" of the floral 

 world, and the limestone annually secreted seems in quantity re- 

 latively insignificant. Tlie vast areas of coral limestones and of 

 coral sands, are composed only of the detritus, torn, grounded 

 and scattered by an ocean never at rest, and often exhibiting an 

 energy and power almost divine, and of fragments of marine 

 shells broken, pounded and rounded in the same way. Shells 

 of existing species are found in the rocks, and Cliarles Burnside, 

 Esq., son of a late Surveyor-general of the Bahamas, informed 

 us that in a Nassau quarry upon his grounds wliich we visited, a 

 large and perfect egg was taken from tlie rock at a distance of 

 sixteen feet below the rock's surface. It is clear that ocean has 



