553 



Saint A n to me of the island of Cuba ; and that 

 island Cape Tiburon of Saint Domingo, Ja- 

 maica, the Bank of La Vibora, and the rock 

 of Serranilla to Cape Gracias a Dios on the 

 coast of the Mosquitos. From this disposition 

 of the most prominent islands and capes of 

 the continent, there results a division into 

 three partial basins. The most northerly 

 has long been marked by a particular deno- 

 mination, that of the Gulph of Mexico ; the 

 intermediary or central basin may be called 

 the Sea of Honduras, on account of the gulph 

 of that name which makes a part of it ; and 

 the southern basin, comprehended between 

 the Caribbean islands and the coast of Vene- 

 zuela, the isthmus of Panama, and the coun- 

 try of the Mosquitos Indians, would form the 

 Caribbean Sea *. The modern volcanic rocks 

 distributed on the two opposite banks of the 

 basin of the West Indies on the east and 

 west, but not on the north and south, is also 

 a phenomenon well worthy of attention. In 

 the Caribbean islands, a groupe of volcanoes, 

 partly extinguished and partly burning-, 



* This denomination is so much the more exact when ap- 

 propriated to the southern part of the basin of the West 

 Indies, that the people of Carib race were disseminated on 

 the neighbouring continent and in the Archipelago, from 

 the Caribana of Darien as far as the Virgins. See above^ 

 Vol. vi, p. 22 and 329. 



