BAHAMAN TRIP 



7 



gray gnatcatcher, the pine warbler, and the beautiful little humming- 

 bird known as the wood-star. 



We made Nicol's Town our base of operations for about seven 

 weeks, collecting in the immediate neighborhood and also making a 

 number of more extended trips. As comparatively little seems to be 

 known of the interior and west side of Andros, the following account 

 of our journeyings is given in considerable detail. "Nicol's Town it- 

 self was a straggling village, having, according to Mr. Davis, Justice 

 of the Peace, a population of 'three hundred and odd.' There were 

 three churches, Methodist, Baptist, and Episcopalian, and still another 

 was in process of construction. There is a schoolhouse and a small 

 jail on the hill; the latter is said to be generally empty. The houses 

 here are mostly square and are either built of coral rock like ours or are 

 of timber with smaller sticks interlaced or ' wattled ' on which the plas- 

 ter is laid. They have sloping roofs thatched with palms. There is 

 but one well in the village, and the water in that rises and falls with the 

 tides. It is very poor, hardly fit to drink; even when boiled it has a 

 brackish taste. We mostly use jelly-cocoanuts and oranges when we 

 can get them." 



March 26. The weather is cold, thermometer 62 at 6.40 p.m. 

 A hard northeast wind is blowing. In the morning walked along the 

 beach north of the village, passing through a grove of cocoanut-palms 

 with here and there a few houses. Some of the trees had been blown 

 down, but continued to grow so that while about twenty feet of the 

 trunk lay on the ground, six or eight feet was growing upwards at 

 right angles to the rest. As the roots were almost entirely out of the 

 ground and resting on one edge, and as I did not see any secondary 

 roots at the bend, it would seem as if the cocoanut required very little 

 nourishment from the soil. The beach along which we walked for 

 about three miles was fringed with the sea-grape (Coccoloba uvifera), 

 back of this for most of the distance were three rows of cocoanut- 

 palms. The few houses stood back of these, and behind the houses 

 was ''the bush." 



• March 17. After breakfast shot some birds. We then walked a 

 short distance through the village, turned south into a path leading 

 past a few scattered houses, a new sisal field and in about three- 

 quarters of a mile reached the pine-yard. The path was just wide 

 enough for single file, and on each side the trees and shrubs made an 



