AGASSIZ: BAHAMAS. 31 



the Glass Window, is very much eaten away into low perpendicular cliffs 

 behind a nearly flat area of considerable extent, eastward of which rise 

 the hills forming the eastern face of the island. As we proceed south, 

 the western cliffs become somewhat higher (Plate XXVII.), as the west- 

 ern hills composing that part of the island, instead of being cut away at 

 the base like the northern hills, have been cut away at a considerable 

 distance inland. To the eastward of the outer western range are piled 

 three to four, or even five, irregular rows of seolian hills, the sides of 

 which encroach one upon another, and form more or less irregular 

 ranges of hills according to the width of the island. 



Even a casual examination of Eleuthera and of the adjacent islands to 

 the northward and westward cannot fail to give one a very fair impres- 

 sion of the forces which have been at work on the Bahamas to bring them 

 to their present condition. 



Northern Eleuthera is nearly disconnected from Eleuthera by the gap 

 forming the passage to the south of the Glass Window. Through this the 

 sea breaks at high tide, and during a heavy swell the wash covers the path 

 leading to Rock Harbor. The seolian hills which form the westward 

 limits of the bay are protected from the sea by Harbor Island and Man 

 Island. They are the inner range of hills which was once separated by 

 a low flat from the outer range of which these islands are the remnants. 

 With the general subsidence this flat has been changed to the shallow 

 bay forming Harbor Island Bay. The action of the sea coupled with 

 subsidence has in its turn formed the passage between these islands, 

 as well as between Current Island and the western spit of Eleuthera. 

 Similarly, George, Russell, Royal, and Egg Islands, with the adjoining 

 rocks and islets, have become separated, and are left as the outcrops of 

 a greater Northern Eleuthera which occupied in comparatively recent 

 times perhaps the whole of the northeastern extremity of the Great 

 Bahama Bank. 



The action of the northwesterly and southwesterly winds along the 

 western face of the islands has completely washed away the western 

 ranges of hills which undoubtedly once formed a part of Eleuthera 

 proper. The more southerly extensions now forming that part of the 

 island from Palmetto Point to Eleuthera Point are the remnants of 

 these ranges, the more prominent being the hills extending from Eleu- 

 thera Point to Powell Point, the outlyers to the eastward of which are 

 the Schooner Cays, Finlay Cay, and the great sandbore bank to the 

 eastward of the so called Middle Ground. This shifting bank we can 

 readily reconstruct as a part of the greater Eleuthera, New Providence 

 Island, to which I have already referred. 



