[The following passages, from Admiral Fox's report, give his reasonsfor believing that Samana, or Atwood's Key, is the island where Columbusfirst touched land. The interest which attaches to this subject at themoment of the centennial, when many voyages will be made by personsfollowing Columbus, induces me to copy Admiral Fox's reasonings indetail. I believe his conclusion to be correct.]

　　This method of applying Columbus's words in detail to refute each ofthe alleged tracks, and the study that I gave to the subject in the winter of1878-79 in the Bahamas, which has been familiar cruising ground to me,has resulted in the selection of Samana or Atwood's Key for the firstlanding place.

　　It is a little island 8.8 miles east and west; 1.6 extreme breadth, andaveraging 1.2 north and south. It has 8.6 square miles. The east end is inlatitude 23 degrees 5' N.; longitude 73 degrees 37' west of Greenwich. Thereef on which it lies is 15 by 2 1/2 miles.

　　On the southeast this reef stretches half a mile from the land, on theeast four miles, on the west two, along the north shore one-quarter to one-half mile, and on the southwest scarcely one-quarter. Turk is smaller thanSamana, and Cat very much larger.

　　The selection of two so unlike in size show that dimension has notbeen considered essential in choosing an island for the first landfall.[*]

　　[*] I am indebted to T. J. McLain, Esq., United States consul at Nassau,for the following information given to him by the captains of this port,who visit Samana or Atwood's Key. The sub-sketch on this chart issubstantially correct: Good water is only obtained by sinking wells. Thetwo keys to the east are covered with guano; white boobies hold the largerone, and black boobies the other; neither intermingles.

　　The island is now uninhabited, but arrow heads and stone hatchets aresometimes found; and in places there are piles of stones supposed to havebeen made by the aborigines. Most of the growth is scrubby, with a fewscattered trees.

　　The Nassau vessels enter an opening through the reef on the south sideof the island and find a very comfortable little harbor with from two to twoand a half fathoms of water. From here they send their boats on shore to"strip" guano, and cut satin, dye woods and bark.

　　When Columbus discovered Guanahani, the journal called it a "littleisland." After landing he speaks of it as "bien grande," "very large," whichsome translate, tolerably, or pretty large. November 20, 1492 (Navarette,first edition, p. 61), the journal refers to Isabella, a larger island thanGuanahani, as "little island," and the fifth of January following (p. 125)San Salvador is again called "little island."The Bahamas have an area of about 37,000 square miles, six per centof which may be land, enumerated as 36 islands, 687 keys, and 2,414rocks. The submarine bank upon which these rest underlies Florida also.

　　But this peninsula is wave-formed upon living corals, whose growth andgradual stretch toward the south has been made known by Agassiz.

　　I had an unsuccessful search for a similar story of the Bahamas, tolearn whether there were any probable changes within so recent a periodas four hundred years.

　　The common mind can see that all the rock there is coral, none ofwhich is in position. The surface, the caves, the chinks, and the numerouspot-holes are compact limestone, often quite crystalline, while beneath it isoolitic, either friable or hard enough to be used for buildings. The hills aresand-blown, not upheaved. On a majority of the maps of the sixteenthcentury there were islands on Mouchoir, and on Silver Banks, where noware rocks "awash;" and the Dutch and the Severn Shoals, which lay to theeast, have disappeared.

　　It is difficult to resist the impression that the shoal banks, and the reefsof the Bahamas, were formerly covered with land; and that for ageological age waste has been going on, and, perhaps, subsidence. Thecoral polyp seems to be doing only desultory work, and that mostly on thenortheast or Atlantic side of the islands; everywhere else it has abandonedthe field to the erosive action of the waves.

　　Columbus said that Guanahani had abundance of water and a verylarge lagoon in the middle of it. He used the word laguna--lagoon, not lago--lake. His arrival in the Bahamas was at the height of the rainy season.

　　Governor Rawson's Report on the Bahamas, 1864, page 92, Appendix 4,gives the annual rainfall at Nassau for ten years, 1855--'64, as sixty-fourinches. From May 1, to November ............