THE MERMAID’S POOL. NASSAU. 4” 
wooded plain, so perfectly level that it would be difficult for a 
rabbit to find a hillock sufficiently high for concealment.” It is 
about one hundred and fifty feet in diameter, sixty-five feet in 
depth, and without banks. The water comes “to the very brim,” 
and it has ‘‘a depth of forty feet at the very edge, which is the 
more remarkable as the adjacent sea is so shallow that it would 
be necessary to go five miles from the shore or six miles from the 
pool, before a depth equal to that of the pool is reached.” Al- 
though a great natural curiosity, and but afew miles from the 
city, the writer says ‘it is almost unknown to the people of 
Nassau.”? He gives the substance of a wild, romantic legend 
concerning this ‘‘Mermaid’s Pool,” in which a dusky island 
princess and a foreign shipwrecked prince act prominent parts. 
Strange noises are heard there at night, and in the form of a 
mermaid the princess at times emerges from the dark pool in the 
dim moonlight, seizes any unfortunate damsel who happens to be 
in the vicinity, and carries her a prisoner to her watery home in 
the rock. 
“The Bahamas yield a ‘‘ cave earth” composed of phosphates 
of lime and some ammonia. It is a kind of guano, and has suf- 
ficient value as a fertilizer to cause it to be exported to other 
countries, principally to the United States. The total value of 
this guano exported has often been about $20,000 a year, at 
about fifteen dollars a ton. It is not used in the colony. 
Nassau is situated in latitude 25° 51’ north, and longitude 77° 
21’ west. The rock upon which it is situated has furnished the 
materials for the outer-walls of all its public and many of its 
private buildings. Nature seems to have had regard ‘to the fact 
that the people who were to live in this enervating air would 
never voluntarily quarry granite or any similar stone, and there- 
fore she has provided them with a rock that is soft below the 
surface and easily worked, but hardens when exposed to the air. 
