1889.] Walks Under the Sea by a Coral Strand. 943 
A slight eminence commands a wide prospect on a coral island, 
and I was particularly impressed with this fact one June day 
upon climbing the slope of a ridge which skirts the north-easterly 
shore of New Providence. Leaving the clean coral street at Dix 
Point, where an old gate guards the entrance to a disused lane, 
and where the crumbling walls of a cottage on the hillside above 
bear witness to better days, a momentary scramble through the 
thick bush brings you to the top. Far along the shore winds the 
emerald bay, hemmed in by long narrow islands, which, as we 
glance down the reef, gradually fade into the blue of the sky and 
of the sea. On the other hand lies New Providence, a vast 
mosaic in greens, the darker settings of the pine and of the palm 
mingling with the light new growth of this ever-springing vegeta- 
tion. This wilderness of color, this green mantle of perpetual 
spring, is thrown into long folds, some eight of which I can count 
at this height, all of them running nearly parallel with the ridge 
on which we stand. They resemble lines of sand dunes, now 
hardened into stone and clad with vegetation, as possibly they 
are, such as may be seen on some of the island reefs, over which 
the ocean occasionally breaks in violent storms. 
Much as these coral islands may interest us from their animal 
and plant life, which has also a story to tell, yet those gardens 
under the sea, the living coral reefs, to which these green specks 
at the surface owe their origin, introduce us to an entirely new 
world, to a fairy-land of strange forms and bright hues, far more 
populous and varied than that which fired the enthusiasm of its 
first discoverer. 
Dix Point, of which I speak now more particularly, since it is 
an admirable specimen of a living, growing reef, forms the south- 
ern arm of a small winding bay not far from the north-eastern 
extremity of New Providence. The point is a low spit of land, or 
more specifically rock, covered with a growth of tropical bush, in 
which we notice the mangrove, the stilt-walker of the tropical 
swapp, the fragrant flowered logwood, the hoary conocarpus, 
and the round-leaved sea grape {Coccolobd). Some stone ruins 
on the eastern side, gray with age and half concealed by the en- 
croaching bush, mark the abode of former and long forgotten 
