4 



A NATURALIST ON DESERT ISLANDS. 



eddies and currents, besides a gentle heave of the sea, 

 which leaves exposed for a second or two, the smooth 

 rounded heads of greenish-yellow Porites, glistening and 

 slippery looking, or the branching antler-like growths 

 of chocolate-coloured Madrepores — ^both very nasty forms 

 of coral, we might say in passing, to run the nose or the 

 side of a boat agxinst. When the sea is rough, this gap 

 becomes the scene of a whirling maze of creamy-white 

 surf, flying spindrift or crashing breakers. How 

 long it will be before the breakers have pounded and 

 piled up sufficient coral blocks, coral sand, and other 

 debris, to bridge the gap completely, it is difficult to say ; 

 but there is good evidence, as we shall see later, to prove 

 that the buccaneers used to anchor their vessels hard by, 

 where now there is only some six feet of water or less. 



Anticipating, then, the all important efforts of the 

 breakers and the lowly, unconscious work of the corals, 

 we may speak of these two densely-wooded islets as one, 

 and say that they occupy a length of from three-and-a- 

 half to four miles in an east and west direction, and 

 rest on a submarine bank which is roughly ten miles 

 long by three or four miles wide. The depth of water 

 over this submerged coral bank varies between five and 

 thirteen fathoms, and no words could exaggerate its 

 clearness, which allows one to look down into depths of 

 say sixty or seventy feet, and observe with incredible 

 ease the fascinating wonderland below. 



As soon as one hes passed the limits of this sunlit 

 bank, with its prodigious quantity of submarine life of 

 every kind and description, the depth of water rapidly 

 increases until, on the north side especially, it sinks down 

 to appalling depths of darkest night. These abysses to 

 the north eventually culminate (and within a very few 

 miles distance) in that stupendous trough across the 

 bottom of this part of the Caribbean Sea known as 

 *' Bartlett's Deep " ; and so awful and so great is the 

 contrast between the conditions of life obtaining in these 

 depths, as compared with the sunny and seemingly 



