THE MEKM aid's POOL. X ASS ATI. 47 



wooded plain, so perfectly level that it would be diflScult for a 

 rabbit to find a hillock sufficiently high for concealment." It is 

 about one hundred and fifty feet in diameter, sixty-five feet in 

 depth, and without banks. The water conies "to the very brim," 

 and it has " a depth of forty feet at the very edge, which is the 

 more remarkable as the adjacent sea is so shallow that it would 

 be necessary to go five miles from the shore or six miles from the 

 pool, before a depth equal to that of the pool is reached." Al- 

 though a great natural curiosity, and but a few miles from the 

 city, the writer says "it is almost unknown to the people of 

 Nassau." He gives the substance of a wild, romantic legend 

 concerning this '"' Mermaid's Pool," in which a dusky island 

 princess and a foreign shipwrecked jDrince act prominent parts. 

 Strange noises are heard there at night, and in the form of a 

 mermaid the princess at times emerges from the dark pool in the 

 dim moonlight, seizes any unfortunate damsel who happens to be 

 in the vicinity, and carries her a prisoner to her watery home in 

 the rock. 



The Bahamas yield a "cave earth" composed of phosphates 

 of lime and some ammonia. It is a kind of guano, and has suf- 

 ficient value as a fertilizer to cause it to be exported to other 

 countries, principally to the United States. The total value of 

 this guano exported has often been about $20,000 a year, at 

 about fifteen dollars a ton. It is not used in the colony. 



Nassau is situated in latitude 25° 51' north, and longitude 77° 

 21' west. The rock upon which it is situated has furnished the 

 materials for the outer-walls of all its public and many of its 

 private buildings. Nature seems to have had regard to the fact 

 that the people who were to live in this enervating air would 

 never voluntarily quarry granite or any similar stone, and there- 

 fore she has provided them Avith a rock that is soft below the 

 surface and easily worked, but hardens when exposed to the air. 



