ommittees
partly elected exercise local supervision. There are higher schools and a
Queen's College in Nassau. Nassau is the seat of a bishopric of the Church
of England created in 1861. The Bahamas are without railways, but there are
good roads in New Providence, and a few elsewhere. A cable connects Nassau
with West Jupiter in Florida.

_History_.--The story of the Bahamas is a singular one, and bears
principally upon the fortunes of New Providence, which, from the fact that
it alone possesses a perfectly safe harbour for vessels drawing more than 9
ft., has always been the seat of [v.03 p.0209] government when it was not
the headquarters of lawlessness. San Salvador, however, claims historical
precedence as the landfall of Columbus on his memorable voyage. Cat Island
was long supposed to be the island first reached by Columbus (12th October
1492) and named by him San Salvador. Then the distinction was successively
transferred to the neighbouring Watling, Great Turk, and Mariguana; but in
1880 the American marine surveyor, G. V. Fox, identified San Salvador, on
seemingly good grounds, with Samana (Atwood Cay), which lies about midway
between Watling and Mariguana. The chief difficulty is its size, for, if
Samana is the true San Salvador, it must have been considerably larger then
than now. Watling Island is generally accepted as the landfall.

Columbus passed through the islands, and in one of his letters to Ferdinand
and Isabella he said, "This country excels all others as far as the day
surpasses the night in splendour; the natives love their neighbours as
themselves; their conversation is the sweetest imaginable; their faces
always smiling; and so gentle and so affectionate are they, that I swear to
your highness there is not a better people in the world." But the natives,
innocent as they appeared, were doomed to utter destruction. Ovando, the
governor of Hispaniola (Haiti), who had exhausted the labour of that
island, turned his thoughts to the Bahamas, and in 1509 Ferdinand
authorized him to procure labourers from these islands. It is said that
reverence and love for their departed relatives was a marked feature in the
character of the aborigines, and that the Spaniards made use of this as a
bait to trap the unhappy natives. They promised to convey the ignorant
savages in their ships to the "heavenly shores" where their departed
friends now dwelt, and about 40,000 were transported to Hispaniola to
perish miserab