AGASSIZ: BAHAMAS. 99 



east from Palmetto Point also skirts the western part of Ocean Bight. 

 All along the shore from Palmetto Point to Northeast Point the bank 

 formed by the 100 fathom line is very narrow. The coast is steep, and 

 is exposed to the full action of the northerly winds. 1 



We did not visit Little Inagua. It is quadrangular in form, eight 

 miles long by five miles broad (Plate IX. Fig. 3). Its highest point 

 on the north side is sixty feet, and on the south side there are a few 

 hills of nearly the same height. The northeast and northwest shores 

 are bold, with a clear sandy bottom to a distance of about one third 

 of a mile. There is a coral growth off the south and east sides ; on the 

 west side the bank to the 100 fathom line is perhaps a mile wide. 



We may readily imagine the various banks on the Bahamas to have 

 been somewhat in the condition of Inagua. An extensive and flourishing 

 coral reef on the edge of the bank may have supplied the material for the 

 formation of the great shallow bank which once existed at the foot of 

 the seolian hills, which in their turn were formed from dry material, 

 supplied from the shallower portions of the bank, blown into dunes and 

 consolidated. 



The outlying eastern islands, Samana, the Plana Cays, and Mariguana, 

 resemble in their structure Watling and Rum Cay, occupying nearly 

 the whole of the bank of which they form a part. 



Neither Inagua nor little Inagua has changed its outline greatly 

 since the subsidence took place which so materially altered the face 

 of the line of banks from Crooked Island to Navidad Bank. Judging 

 from an examination of the charts, it appears that, as we pass eastward 

 from the Crooked Island Bank, the banks have been worn away generally 

 in proportion to their easterly position. The Crooked Island Bank has 

 in proportion to its size a greater amount of dry land fringing its bor- 

 der than Caicos Bank, that in its turn more than the Turk's Islands 

 Bank, while the Mouchoir, Silver, and Navidad Banks carry more water 

 as we pass to the east. 



1 Dr. Henry Bryant visited Inagua in 1859, and gave a short account of the 

 island in 1866. (Proc. Bost. Soc. Nat. Hist., Vol. XI. p. 63.) He considers the salt 

 lake "the remains of the original lagoon which once occupied the greater part of 

 the island, and which has been gradually filled up so evenly that the portion which 

 still remains is nowhere more than a few feet in depth." As Dr. Bryant well says, 

 the fertile plains are merely salt plains covered with a coarse grass dotted here and 

 there with clumps of stunted trees, and scarcely elevated above the level of the salt 

 lake. Dr. Bryant considered both Inagua and Watling Islands as "merely a nar- 

 row margin of an interior lagoon" ; the plains as "the remains of lagoons formed 

 by fringing reefs filled up by the action of the winds and waves." 



