66 
THE PLANT WORLD. 
A little over a mile to the south of Mathew Town is one of 
the best lighthouses in the Bahaman group. The light stands 
about 100 feet above the level of the ocean, and its first class 
minute-interval white flash can be seen many miles out at sea. 
Little Inagua, lying ; about six miles to the north of N. E. 
Point, Great Inagua, is about eight miles long and five miles 
wide. It too has a rock-bound coast, in which sandy beaches are 
of frequent occurrence. There are no towns on this island, a few 
people living there spasmodically, as the humor takes them. The 
American Consul has a lease of the island, and has gone into 
the goat-raising industry there to quite an extent, claiming to have 
some fifteen hundred animals roaming through its wilds. 
The surface of the country, on both islands, is essentially flat, 
being, with few exceptions, but a few feet above sea-level. This 
precludes any great variation in the flora due to altitudinal en¬ 
vironment, and such floral formations as exist depend on other 
conditions. The islands are composed entirely of a limestone 
rock, porous and honey-combed with holes and caves, some of 
the latter of extensive proportions and reported to be filled with 
bat guano. The entrances to the caves occur at times in a mass of 
shrubs, so that in collecting it is necessary to be exceedingly care¬ 
ful, for a plunge into one of these openings would be a serious 
matter. They frequently descend fifteen or twenty feet per¬ 
pendicularly, the walls and floor being furnished with jagged 
projections, so that a fall would result in severe cuts and bruises, 
if nothing worse happened. 
Skirting the shores, and more rarely in the interior, are rocky 
ridges, often with slight elevations at irregular intervals. These 
elevations are really of little significance, and while appearing 
of considerable size as seen from the sea, on near approach seem 
to dwindle into almost nothing. I was often disappointed, on 
making a landing to climb one of these which seemed quite for¬ 
midable from the sloop, to have it apparently melt into 1 the gen¬ 
eral level. The dwarf character of the vegetation everywhere 
lends itself readily to' this deception, the miniature trees and shrubs 
which abound on the islands making the hills appear from the 
distance larger than they in reality are. The highest point, East 
