d in places there are piles of stones supposed to
have been made by the aborigines. Most of the growth is scrubby, with a
few scattered trees.

The Nassau vessels enter an opening through the reef on the south side
of the island and find a very comfortable little harbor with from two
to two and a half fathoms of water. From here they send their boats on
shore to "strip" guano, and cut satin, dye woods and bark.

When Columbus discovered Guanahani, the journal called it a "little
island." After landing he speaks of it as "bien grande," "very large,"
which some translate, tolerably, or pretty large. November 20, 1492
(Navarette, first edition, p. 61), the journal refers to Isabella,
a larger island than Guanahani, as "little island," and the fifth of
January following (p. 125) San Salvador is again called "little island."

The Bahamas have an area of about 37,000 square miles, six per cent of
which may be land, enumerated as 36 islands, 687 keys, and 2,414 rocks.
The submarine bank upon which these rest underlies Florida also. But
this peninsula is wave-formed upon living corals, whose growth and
gradual stretch toward the south has been made known by Agassiz.

I had an unsuccessful search for a similar story of the Bahamas, to
learn whether there were any probable changes within so recent a period
as four hundred years.

The common mind can see that all the rock there is coral, none of which
is in position. The surface, the caves, the chinks, and the numerous
pot-holes are compact limestone, often quite crystalline, while beneath
it is oolitic, either friable or hard enough to be used for buildings.
The hills are sand-blown, not upheaved. On a majority of the maps of the
sixteenth century there were islands on Mouchoir, and on Silver Banks,
where now are rocks "awash;" and the Dutch and the Severn Shoals, which
lay to the east, have disappeared.

It is difficult to resist the impression that the shoal banks, and the
reefs of the Bahamas, were formerly covered with land; and that for a
geological age waste has been going on, and, perhaps, subsidence. The
coral polyp seems to be doing only desultory work, and that mostly on
the northeast or Atlantic side of the islands; everywhere else it has
abandoned the field to the erosive action of the waves.

Columbus said that Guanahani had abundance of water and a very large
lagoon in the middle of it. He used the word laguna--lagoon, not
lago--lake. His arrival in the Bah