AGASSIZ : BAHAMAS. 33 



width of more than eight miles (Plate X. Fig. 2). This must at some 

 time in the history of the bank have formed an extensive lagoon or flat 

 very similar to the lakes and flats now existing on a smaller scale at New 

 Providence. 



Although from abreast of Savanna Sound to Powell Point the general 

 aspect of the island continues the same, yet from the altered trend of the 

 shore its outline is greatly changed, and the island widens out between 

 Powell Point and Eleuthera Point and extends eastward to form a loug, 

 irregular triangle, deeply indented by Tarpon Bay and Eock Harbor an- 

 chorage. The low spit forming the outer barrier of the harbor seems to 

 be of recent shore sand origin, and not to be the remnant of some wider 

 promontory. It is similar in structure to the few beaches and spits of 

 recent origin which here and there have been thrown up to form small 

 lagoons or barriers across headlands in favorable localities, where they 

 are exposed to any length of reach of wind, as this point is to the north- 

 west winds, which often blow here with great violence. 



We leave the bank by a shifting channel leading from Tarpon Point 

 by the sand spit to the north of Powell Point, to the westward of which 

 lie an extensive flat formed by sand bars, and a few low isolated cays, 

 like the Schooner Cays (Plate X. Fig. 2). This flat separates Exuma 

 Sound from the deeper water on the bank to the northward of the 

 sound. The shifting character of this channel is well shown from the 

 fact that, drawing eight feet of water, we passed safely over a bar marked 

 one foot on the chart as corrected to 1882. This extensive flat, filled 

 with numerous dry sand bores, extending from Schooner Cays on the 

 east to Finley Cay on the north and the Sail Eocks on the south, may 

 mark the position once occupied by the westward extension of Eleuthera 

 Island. 



Entering Exuma Sound we skirted the Sound shore of Eleuthera past 

 Bamboo Point to Eleuthera Point. The whole of this face of the island 

 is low, the seolian hills not rising more than twenty-five or thirty feet in 

 height. Near Eleuthera Point the rolling hills become slightly higher, 

 some of them reaching forty to forty-five feet, — as Miller Hill, for in- 

 stance, which is noted on the charts as forty-five feet high. There are 

 numerous disconnected beaches on the Sound face of Eleuthera. The 

 100 fathom line is not more than two miles distant from the shore line, 

 falling abruptly from the 10 to the 15 fathom line. Between Powell 

 Point and Bamboo Point it is less than a mile off shore. The eastern 

 extremity of Eleuthera Island at Eleuthera Point shows admirably the 

 action of the sea in breaking through the long and narrow spit which 



VOL. XXVI. — NO. 1. 3 



