446 



MEXICO, CENTKAL AMERICA, WEST INDIES. 



Fis 



215 — Watlivg Island 

 Fcale 1 : 660,000. 



1 



to enclose his plot, and may be dispossessed by tlie first comer tbe moment lie 

 ceases to work it. 



Some of the planters of Eleutbera reside in Harbour Island for the con- 

 venience of its excellent anchorage ; here they ship large quantities of the 

 exquisite pineapples grown on the more fertile soil of the larger island. Eleuthera 

 takes its name from the eleuthera croton, a drug formerly much in vogue in the 

 European pharmacopoeia. Conservative physicians long preferred the bark of 

 this plant to that of the cinchona as a specific against fevers. 



Cat Island, so named from the domestic animal, which since its introduction 

 has here run wild, resembles Eleuthera in form but presents a less graceful 



curve and a more elevated surface. 

 By many writers it has been identi- 

 fied with the Guanahani (San Salva- 

 dor) discovered by Columbus in 1492 ; 

 a country residence even bears the 

 name of Columbia, as standing on 

 the very spot where the navigator first 

 landed in the New World. Since 1625, 

 when this identification was first em- 

 bodied in Joannes de Laet's map of 

 the Kew World, Cat Island long 

 figured on all documents as the real 

 Guanahani, and both Washington 

 Irving and Humboldt lent the support 

 of their great authority to the same 

 view. 



But at the end of the last century 



the flagrant contradictions between 



the accounts of Columbus' voyage, as 



- — ' given by himself and reproduced by 



=q Las Casas, and as described by Wash- 



500 to 1,000 i.oof) to 2.000 2.000 Ffms. infftou Irvinff, gave rise to doubts 



Fathoms. Fathoms. & upwards. " o' o 



12 Miles. and to fresh theories. The nearly 



uninhabited Watling Island, about 

 50 miles east of the southern extremity of Cat Island, was substituted by Muiloz 

 for the latter, and this view, afterwards supported by Beoher, Peschel and Major, 

 has long been accepted as the more probable. Navarrete, another Spanish historian 

 of the jSTew World, suggested a third and totally different route, according to 

 which Columbus first landed at Great Turk Island, far to the south of the Great 

 Bahama Bank. Lastly, Varnhagen found the " true Guanahani " in Mariguana, 

 about midway between AVatling and Turk. 



Such were the various hypotheses prevalent down to the year 1880, when the 

 American navigator, G. V. Fox, perfectly familiar with the Bahama waters, 

 made the discovery of a fifth Guanahani, which really seems to be the right 



W.»t «P Gr«,nw,c>, 



Depths. 



to 100 

 Fathoms. 



10 ) to 500 

 Fathoms. 



