of mixed blood in nearly all the islands, and it is
the primary cause of the problems presented in the
government of the colonies there. A ghastly e x hibition
of the consequences of the experiment of
self-government for those unprepared for it has been
going on in Haiti nearly all the present century.
C H A P T E R X I
THE BAHAMAS OR LUCAYAN ISLANDS
TH E submarine extension of our continent
stretches in a long and relatively narrow
plateau from the coast of Florida south-easterly to
the deep channels off the shores of Cuba and Haiti.
This great platform from which the Bahama Islands
rise is more than seven hundred miles long and from
one hundred and fifty to two hundred miles wide;
and its outer declivity plunges abruptly to depths
of 12,000 to 15,000 feet. From that huge rampart
its general level slopes gradually downward toward
the west and south-west, till it sinks off into the
abyss of 10,000 feet or more toward the Windward
Passage between Cuba and Haiti, the depth diminishing
from there westward to 6000 in the Old
Bahama Channel, about 4000 in the New Bahama
Channel, and 1000 in the Straits of Florida over
the ridge whose farther slope sinks into the depths
of the Gulf of Mexico.
On the surface of this peninsula plateau beneath
the waves there are banks and shoals of varying e x tent
and altitude, and it is penetrated here and there
by fiords and deep valleys. Near its northern part
115