THE BAHAMAS AND BERMUDAS 301 



TO SIR JOHN MURRAY 



Hamilton, Bermudas, 

 March 12, 1894. 



I 've been here nearly a couple of weeks examining 

 the islands and running out to the reefs whenever the 

 weather will allow. I 've had so far not many pleasant 

 days. March is nearly as windy here as at home, but of 

 course far preferable. There is an excellent tug of which 

 I have the refusal every morning ; this has enabled me 

 to see a good deal in a very short time. I 've made four 

 sections across the reefs and am quite satisfied that corals 

 here have had still less to do with the present configura- 

 tion of the islands than at the Bahamas. The problem 

 here is practically the same, but the corals are so unimpor- 

 tant an element in the so-called reef as to form practically 

 the thinnest kind of veneer over the ledges of seolian 

 rocks which form the so-called Northern, Western, and 

 Eastern Reefs. 



The Northern Rock, Mills Breaker, and a lot of rocks 

 which are awash, are all of seolian formation, the rem- 

 nants of the former Proto Bermudas land when it occu- 

 pied the greater part of the bank as an oval highland 

 full of aeolian hills which have been eroded and eaten 

 away, and left the ledge on which the thin veneer of 

 corals, Alcyonoid, and Millepore have built. All the 

 patches between the outer reef and the islands are simi- 

 larly fragments of the former land coming within the 

 five fathom line quite close to the L W M, many of them, 

 and veneered in the same way. That these patches are 

 nothing but sunken islets and ledges can be plainly seen 

 anywhere along the north and south shores, where they 

 are still actively forming, especially on the south shore, 



