125) San Salvador is again called "little island." The Bahamas have an area of about 37,000 square miles, six per cent of which may be land, enumerated as 36 islands, 687 keys, and 2,414 rocks.
The submarine bank upon which these rest underlies Florida also.

But this peninsula is wave-formed upon living corals, whose growth and gradual stretch toward the south has been made known by Agassiz.
I had an unsuccessful search for a similar story of the Bahamas, to learn whether there were any probable changes within so recent a period as four hundred years.
The common mind can see that all the rock there is coral, none of which is in position.

The surface, the caves, the chinks, and the numerous pot-holes are compact limestone, often quite crystalline, while beneath it is oolitic, either friable or hard enough to be used for buildings.
The hills are sand-blown, not upheaved.

On a majority of the maps of the sixteenth century there were islands on Mouchoir, and on Silver Banks, where now are rocks "awash;" and the Dutch and the Severn Shoals, which lay to the east, have disappeared.
It is difficult to resist the impression that the shoal banks, and the reefs of the Bahamas, were formerly covered with land; and that for a geological age waste has been going on, and, perhaps, subsidence.

The coral polyp seems to be doing only desultory work, and that mostly on the northeast or Atlantic side of the islands; everywhere else it has abandoned the field to the erosive action of the waves.
Columbus said that Guanahani had abundance of water and a very large lagoon in the middle of it.