Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 29.djvu/827

Rh when compared with the boundless wealth of living things in mid-ocean. Still, our three weeks of tossing and pitching in a heavy sea had tried our patience until we were heartily tired of our narrow quarters, and ready to give a warm welcome to any land.

We sighted Abaco, the outermost one of the Bahama Islands, at daybreak on a beautiful Sunday morning, and we were soon in calm water, threading our way before a gentle breeze, which hardly ruffled the surface among the countless small islands which form a fringe or natural breakwater around the "mainland" of Abaco.

This island, which lies nearly north and south, is about a hundred miles long, and its eastern edge is bordered by a narrow sound from three to five miles wide, the outer shore of which is formed by a rim made up of thousands of small islets, or "keys," separated from each other by narrow, winding channels. Some of the keys are ten or twelve miles around, while others are no larger than a small house. They are high and well wooded, with bold headlands and cliffs, and long, winding bays and inlets.

Our first sail among them was an experience which will always remain fresh in our memories. As far as the horizon, before and behind us, was a series of bold promontories, one jetting out beyond another, and, as our vessel rounded one rocky point after the other, new stretches of land and water opened before us with new glimpses of the strange country we had come so far to explore.

We had read many glowing descriptions of the gorgeous beauty of the tropics, but these were all forgotten, and we felt that we were entering a land where everything was new. Our reason refused to put any limit to the wonderful discoveries which filled our imagination, and, as we sailed slowly past cliffs bathed in spray from the breakers which rolled in from the ocean, past the mouths of caves which the sea had hollowed out in the limestone rock, past deep bays and long, winding sounds which penetrated deep into the islands, our fancy peopled every cave and tide-pool with strange animals new to science, and we felt all the glow of enthusiasm which we experienced when we first entered a scientific laboratory and prepared to solve all the problems of the unknown universe.

Navigation among the sunken reefs and submerged islands, which are much more numerous than those above water, is very dangerous. A few miles away the ocean is more than three miles deep, with no land nearer than Africa, and the heavy sea which is always pounding upon the outer reefs soon puts an end to any vessel which deviates from the narrow, winding channels between the ledges of growing coral; but our pilot steered us safely through the crooked inlet between Whale Key and No-Name Key into the inner sound.

Here we saw, for the first time, that intensely green sea which has been so frequently mentioned by voyagers among coral islands. This vivid color soon became more familiar, but never lost its novelty, and