asterly breeze carrying to their eager
nostrils the perfumes of land. Amid an excitement and joyful
anticipation that it is exhilarating even to think about the cables were
got up and served and coiled on deck, and the anchors, which some of them
had thought would never grip the bottom again, unstopped and cleared.
The leadsman of the Santa Maria, who has been finding no bottom with his
forty-fathom line, suddenly gets a sounding; the water shoals rapidly
until the nine-fathom mark is unwetted, and the lead comes up with its
bottom covered with brown ooze. Sail is shortened; one after another the
great ungainly sheets of canvas are clewed up or lowered down on deck;
one after another the three helms are starboarded, and the three ships
brought up to the wind. Then with three mighty splashes that send the
sea birds whirling and screaming above the rocks the anchors go down; and
the Admiral stands on his high poop-deck, and looks long and searchingly
at the fragment of earth, rock-rimmed, surf-fringed, and tree-crowned, of
which he is Viceroy and Governor-General.

Watling's Island, as it is now called, or San Salvador, as Columbus named
it, or Guanahani, as it was known to the aborigines, is situated in
latitude 24 deg. 6' N., and longitude 74 deg 26' W., and is an
irregularly shaped white sandstone islet in about the middle of the great
Bahama Bank. The space occupied by the whole group is shaped like an
irregular triangle extending from the Navidad Bank in the Caribbean Sea
at the south-east corner, to Bahama Island in Florida Strait on the
north, about 200 miles. The south side trends west by north for 600
miles, and the north side north-west by north 720 miles. Most of the
islands and small rocks in this group, called Keys or Cays, are very low,
and rise only a few feet above the sea; the highest is about 400 feet
high. They are generally situated on the edge of coral and sand banks,
some of which are of a very dangerous character. They are thinly wooded,
except in the case of one or two of the larger islands which contain
timber of moderate dimensions. The climate of the Bahamas is mild and
temperate, with refreshing sea breezes in the hottest months; and there
is a mean temperature of 75 deg. from November to April. Watling's
Island is about twelve miles in length by six in breadth, with rocky
shores slightly indented. The greater part of its area is occupied by
salt-water lagoons, separated from one an