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Updated: June 23, 2025
Had Columbus held a direct course west from Gomera, in latitude 27° 47' N. he would have fallen in with one of the desert sandy islands on the coast of Florida, near a place now called Hummock, or might have been wrecked on the Montanilla reef, at the north end of the Bahama banks: his deflection therefore, to the S.W. on the 7th October, was fortunate for the success of his great expedition.
The island of New Providence, of which Nassau is the capital, is one of the group constituting the Bahama Islands, lying directly east of the Florida coast, and about three hundred and fifty miles distant from it. The town is regularly and well built, and during our "late unpleasantness" was the principal rendezvous of the scores of blockade-runners.
None of your rover tricks, Ned Galloway, unless they are called for, or I'll let you know which of us two is captain and which is quartermaster. Make him fast to the table." "Nay, I thought you meant to roast him!" said the quartermaster. "You surely do not mean to let him go?" "If you and I were marooned on a Bahama cay, Ned Galloway, it is still for me to command and for you to obey.
This furnishes a sufficient proof of the strength of the current in the Bahama channel; for it will be remembered that he ran over to Cuba with a fair wind. After contending for four days, until the 24th November, with light winds against the force of these currents, he arrived at length opposite the level island whence he had set out the week before when going to Babeque.
The same belief is held in France, Ireland, and Scotland, in Scandinavia, and Hungary, as well as in Asia Minor, in Japan, China, and Burn lap; in Java, and amongst the people of the Bahama Islands, as amongst the negroes of the Soudan or those of the west coast of Africa, who look upon these stones as bolts launched from Heaven by Sango, the god of thunder; amongst the ancient inhabitants of Nicaragua as well as the Malays, who, however, still make similar implements.
The salmon, the trout, the cod, and all the other tribes of the finny people, are reputable in their shapes, and altogether respectable looking creatures. But, within the tropics, Dame Nature plays strange vagaries; and here, on the great Bahama Bank, every new customer, as he floundered in on deck no joke to him, poor fellow elicited shouts of laughter from the crew.
There are so many of these small islands in the Bahama group that the geographers may be excused for the heterogeneous manner in which they have placed them on the common maps. To find their true and relative position one must consult the sailing-charts, where absolute correctness is supposed to be found, a prime necessity in such intricate navigation.
The severe labor imposed by the Spaniards made such frightful inroads on the native population that within a decade labor for the plantations and mines began to grow scarce and forty thousand inhabitants of the Bahama Islands were imported to increase the supply.
I at once put the ship before the wind, and set her course southeast, which, being perfectly familiar with these seas, I knew would give her a safe run, and, in about sixty miles, carry her by the southern point of the Little Bahama Bank, where, rounding this great breakwater against northers, we should be in a comparatively smooth sea, that would admit of either laying to or anchoring.
True, the month of July was not the time of the year which pleasure-seekers would choose for sailing in the West Indies, but of this he did not take much thought. The way to the Bahama Isles was easy. They stopped for a while at Nassau, and then went to San Salvador. The first part of the New World which Columbus discovered is now but seldom visited, and few inhabitants are found there.
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