Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 29.djvu/829

Rh umbrella to meet several feet above the water at the point from which the main stem arises. Behind us, several miles away, is the "mainland" of Abaco, separated from us by the green water of the sound, which stretches in both directions as far as the horizon. In front of us, on the shore of the bay, lies the town of Green Turtle, a much more prosperous and civilized place than we had been led to expect, with freshly painted two-story stone and frame houses, set side by side close to the straight, narrow main street, which is used only as a foot-path, as there are no horses or cattle nearer than Nassau. The main street, which is called Broadway, is hardly more than ten feet wide, while the cross-streets are just wide enough for two persons to pass. They are bordered by stone walls or high fences, and are perfectly level, as clean as the deck of a vessel, pure white, with a bed of solid coral limestone, the inequalities of which are filled with cement.

This description applies to only the better portions of the town, where the white natives and a very few of the negroes live. On one side of the harbor a long, low sand-spit separates this portion from the much more picturesque portion inhabited by the poorer people, most of whom are negroes. Here the little palm-thatched huts, without doors or windows or chimneys, most of them in the most attractive stages of picturesque decay and dilapidation, without any regular arrangement nestle in a thicket of aloe and cactus and bananas and castor-oil plant, which runs parallel to the white sand-beach, and is penetrated here and there by the narrow white foot-paths which lead to the huts.

This is by far the most distinctive and interesting portion of the town, and every feature of the landscape, the clear water, the white beach, the tropical thicket, the thatched huts, the towering cocoanut trees, and the dark-green leaves of the bananas, are all so thoroughly tropical that, as we lie on the deck of the little schooner floating on the glassy surface of the calm water under the deep blue sky, with great banks of white clouds piled up on the horizon, we have before us every feature which our reading has led us to associate with coral islands, and it is easy to imagine ourselves in the South Pacific.

Our subsequent exploration of the Bahamas showed us that nowhere else in the whole group are so many of the characteristic peculiarities of the tropics crowded into such a small space. We had very scanty information when we made our selection, but the choice of Green Turtle was a fortunate accident, for our first view of the islands gave us a more intimate acquaintance with coral islands than we should have gained in a month spent at Nassau.

Beyond the town the island ends in a bold, overhanging cliff, separated by a narrow inlet from a small, low island, Pelican Key, which is covered by a growth of cocoanut-trees. From our anchorage we can look out through this inlet, framed between the two islands, and