.V.ASSIZ: BERMUDAS. 273 



PROTO-BERMUDA. 



Plate II. 



Rein, Thomson, Rice, Fewkes, and Heilprin, all agree to the former 

 greater extension of the Bermudian land, and Thomson, 1 speaking of 

 the Xorth Rock, and of Pulpit Rock off Ireland Island, says there can 

 scarcely be any doubt that the dry land of Bermuda at one time occu- 

 pied a space considerably larger than it does at present. 



We may readily reconstruct the proto-Bermudian land from the exist- 

 ing charts (Plate II.). Beginning with the line and clusters of islands 

 running from Ireland Islaud to St. David Head, these must in earlier 

 times have been somewhat wider. The main island must have extended 

 south beyond the line of the reef, and dry land must have completely 

 barred the access of the sea to the sinks which on the east constituted 

 Harrington Sound and Castle and St. George Harbors, St. George Isl- 

 and itself probably forming the western edge of the Ship Channel val- 

 ley. On the west the main island reached to Hogfish Cut valley, and 

 Somerset and Ireland Islands were probably connected with a range of 

 seolian hills running from Chub Cut across Elies Flat. On the east, 

 Ireland Island was connected with Spanish Point by a ridge which 

 isolated Great Sound, Port Royal Bay, and Hamilton Harbor sinks from 

 the outer lagoons, Great Sound and Hamilton Harbor both probably 

 being disconnected sinks, and both isolated by low saddles from Great 

 Sound sink. The ledge flats to the west of Hogfish Cut and to the north 

 of Chaddock, Little, and Long Bars, which pass to the east of Chub 

 Heads as far as Chub Cut, formed, in connection with the Elies Y\at, hills 

 of which the ledges are the remnants, the barrier separating a great 

 sound larger than any now existing from the adjoining proto-Bermu- 

 dian sounds. Of these we can trace four others of great size. One 

 bounded on the southwest by the hills of Elies Flat, on the northwest by 

 the hills of the ledge flat extending north from Chub Cut, on the north 

 by the line of flats running east in the direction of Three Hill Shoals till 

 they strike the eastern face of the sound formed by the Brackish Pond 

 Flats, the eastern boundary reaching towards Spanish Point and sep- 

 arated from the shoals north of it by the Ship Channel valley. The 

 second sound is enclosed by the Brackish Pond Flats on the west, by 

 the Bailey Bay Flats on the north and east, and by the main island on the 



1 Thomson, The Atlantic, I. 318. 

 vol. xxvi. — no 2. 18 



