42. 



ANTILLEAN-CARIBBEAN 

 REGION 



taken by Schuchert (1935) to mark the eastern limit of the Greater 

 Antilles. The Anegada Passage is the site of a submarine channel across 

 the Caribbean submarine ridge, and its shallowest course is over 3000 feet 

 deep. The arc of volcanic islands south of Anegada Passage is known 

 variously as the Caribbees, the Windward Islands, and the Lesser Antilles. 



The Caribbean Sea, according to most maps, includes all water south of 

 the Greater Antilles, west of the Lesser Antilles, north of Colombia and 

 Venezuela, and east of Central America. The major basin is south of 

 shallow banks that stretch from Honduras and Nicaragua to Jamaica, and 

 from Jamaica to Hispaniola. It is divided into a western half, the Colom- 

 bian basin, and an eastern half, the Venezuelan basin, by the Beata ridge 

 which extends southwesterly from Hispaniola. The Tanner basin or deep 

 in the eastern half has a greatest known depth of 16,800 feet. The Aves 

 swell, marked on the north by Aves Island, separates the Venezuelan 

 basin from the Grenada basin, which is bounded on the east by the Carib- 

 bees and their supporting ridge. 



North of the Rosaline and Pedro Banks and Jamaica, and south of the 

 Misteriosa Bank, the Caymans, and eastern Cuba is a deep, east-west- 

 trending basin with greatest known depth of 22,788 feet. The major basin 

 is called the Cayman trench, and the deep inner trough, the Bartlett. See 

 Fig. 41.15. 



GEOGRAPHIC PROVINCES 



The West Indies were discovered by Columbus when he came ashore on 

 the island of San Salvador. The name Antilles, which comes from the 

 mythical island of Antilia or Antillia, and this in turn possibly from 

 Atlantis, Plato's vanished land in the Atlantic, came to be applied to the 

 islands of the region (Schuchert, 1935). Following the general pattern 

 of use today, the term Greater Antilles will refer to the major islands, 

 Cuba, Jamaica, Hispaniola (the Dominican Republic and Haiti), Puerto 

 Rico (Porto Rico), the Virgin Islands, and the Bahama Islands. See map, 

 Fig. 42.1. Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands are separated from the 

 volcanic islands on the south by the Anegada Passage, which has been 



GREATER ANTILLES 



Cube 



Physiograpluj. Cuba is the westernmost island of the Greater Antilles. 

 It is 100 miles south of Florida, is 750 miles long, and has an average 

 width of 50 miles. The shape of Cuba as defined by the existing shorelines 

 would be considerably changed if the water level dropped only 50 feet. 

 The Isle of Pines and numerous cayos on the north and south coasts would 

 become part of the mainland, and the area would be increased 30 per- 

 cent (Palmer, 1942). Beyond the 50-foot isobath, deep water sets in almost 

 everywhere. 



The principal geomorphic divisions are shown in the upper map of 

 Fig. 42.2. 



670 



