Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 66.djvu/402

398 As a glance at the map will show (Map 1), the Bermudas consist of a chain of about half a dozen islands so grouped that the whole bears a fancied resemblance to a gauntlet. The broad wrist region at the northeast is made up of St. David's, Smith's and St. George's islands and a part of the main, or Bermuda, island, the rest of which stands for the hand, the thumb and the first joints of the fingers, the remaining joints of the fingers being represented by Somerset and Ireland islands. The whole length of the group from northeast to southwest is about fifteen miles, and the width is usually a mile or at most two miles; in many places it is much less. A fairly continuous ridge occupies the axis of the islands mentioned. Besides these larger islands, there are numerous smaller ones (Fig. 4), so that it may well be that there is, as claimed, an island for every day in the year. The larger islands are so indented by bays and sounds that it is evident they will

in time become divided up into smaller ones, and thus add to the existing number. The largest of the bodies of water on the north that seem to have eaten their way into the land masses is Castle Harbor (Map 2). This lagoon is from two to three miles in diameter, and communicates with the open sea on the southeast by several passages separating from each other as many small islands, and with a great northern lagoon by means of a long narrow arm of the sea called Ferry Beach. Connected with Ferry Reach at its northeasterly end is St. George's Harbor, which affords an excellent and well protected anchorage. Southwest from Castle Harbor, and separated from it by only a narrow ridge, is Harrington Sound, which looks like an inland lake (Fig. 5); it is a mile wide, two miles long, and in places sixty or seventy feet deep. This has but one communication with the sea above ground,