Page:The Mythology of All Races Vol 11 (Latin American).djvu/39



GLANCE at a map of the Western Hemisphere reveals two great continents, North and South America, somewhat tenuously united by the Isthmus and the Antilles. The Isthmus is solid, mountainous land, forming a part of that backbone of the hemisphere which extends along Its western border, continuous from Alaska to the Land of Fire. The Antilles are an archipelago, or rather a group of archipelagoes, extending without gap from the tip of Florida to Trinidad and the mouths of the Orinoco. Both connexions have a certain weight, or leaning, toward North America. The Isthmus narrows southward almost to the point of its attachment to South America, while to the north it broadens out into Central America, the peninsula of Yucatan, and the plateau of Mexico. Similarly, the southern division of the archipelago, the Lesser Antilles, forms an arc of Islets, mere stepping-stones, as it were, from the southern continent to the large islands of the Greater Antilles—Porto Rico, Hispaniola or Haiti, Jamaica, Cuba—which are natural outliers of the continent to the north. Cuba, Indeed, almost unites Yucatan and Florida; while breasting Cuba and Florida, toward the open sea, is a third island group, the Bahamas, still further emphasizing the northern predominance.