THE BAHAMA ISLANDS 411 



widow Malone, so that the relationship between the thiee families became verj 

 close. The family charts of Nathaniel Key and " Old " John Albury are 

 introduced in the general diagram immediately above the legend. It will be 

 noticed that only a few of the descendants of widow Malone are indicated as 

 having married. By this it is not meant that the others did not marry ; many 

 of them did, but they moved away and settled elsewhere, and in no way affected 

 the future history of the settlement of Hopetown. Only those marriages are 

 indicated in which the children remain and lived to intermarry in the settle- 

 ment. The red Ijnes on the chart connect the same individuals, and are intro- 

 duced to facilitate the reader in tracing relationship. They indicate at a glance 

 the enormous amount of intermarriage between the various members of the 

 Malone, Eussell, Albury, and Key families of Hopetown. In order to further 

 aid the reader, diseases and abnormalities are printed in red and are placed 

 directly under the name of the individuals afflicted. It will be seen at a glance 

 that early in the history of the Malone family these indications of degeneracy 

 were absent; but they began in the fourth generation and rapidly increased 

 afterward until they culminated by the presence of five idiots in one family. 

 The original stock was apparently excellent, but the present state of the 

 descendants is deplorable. A few of the more striking cases of disease and 

 degeneracy at Hopetown will now be discussed. 



Special Cases of Degeneracy. 



Leprosy was introduced into this settlement in the third generation 

 through the marriage of Elizabeth Malone, daughter of Ephraim Malone, to 

 Charles Sands of Cherokee Sound, Abaco, who subsequently died of leprosy. 

 Three of his children, Charles, Uriah, and Eomelda had leprosy. Romelda 

 married Octavius H. Dorsett of Nassau. One of their children, Charlotte 

 Dorsett, developed leprosy and died of the disease. These facts would seem 

 to favor the theory that leprosy is transmitted by inheritance, but the same 

 facts might with equal force be presented to uphold the theory that leprosy 

 is contagious. The two lepers now living at Hopetown, Prancetta and Ab- 

 salom Malone (Plate LXXI, Pigs. 1 and 2), are not directly related to the 

 family just described. 



In the family of William Albury who married Elizabeth Tedder, two 

 children out of four are deaf and dumb. Another interesting case is the 

 family of Joseph Malone. Joseph married Virginia Malone; their daughter, 

 a little girl of 7 years, is a congenital idiot and the father has developed 



