The loquat, an introduction from China, thrives admirably. The citron, sour orange, lemon and lime grow wild but the apple and peach do not come to perfection. The shores are fringed with the mangrove the prickly pear grows luxuriantly in the most barren districts and wherever the ground is left to itself the sage bush springs up profusely. The principal kind of tree is the so-called "Bermudas cedar," really a species of juniper, which furnishes timber for small vessels. Vegetation is very rapid, and the soil is clad in a mantle of almost perpetual green. The islands attract a large number of visitors annually from America. and its minimum 49°, the mean annual temperature being 70°. The maximum reading of the thermometer is about 87° F. The climate is mild and healthy, although serious epidemics of yellow fever and typhus have occurred. There is a total want of streams and wells of fresh water, and the inhabitants are dependent on the rain, which they collect and preserve in tanks. It is generally mixed with vegetable matter and coral sand. The surface soil is a curious kind of red earth, which is also found in ochre-like strata throughout the limestone. There are evidences of small oscillations of levels, but no proofs of great elevation or depression. The Bermudas were formerly much more extensive than at present, and they may possibly stand upon the summit of a hidden volcano. They probably rest upon a foundation of aeolian rock. The very remarkable "serpuline atolls" are covered by a solid crust made of the convoluted tubes of serpulae and Vermetus, together with barnacles, mussels, nullipores, corallines and some true incrusting corals. They are ridges of aeolian limestone plastered over by a thin layer of corals and other calcareous organisms. Even the reefs are not wholly formed of coral. The surface is frequently irregularly honeycombed. Where fresh the rock is soft, but where it has been exposed to the action of the sea it is covered by a hard crust and often loses all trace of stratification. These limestones are composed chiefly of comminuted shells drifted and deposited by the wind, and they are very irregularly stratified, as is usually the case with wind-blown deposits. Bahamas) which in some of the larger islands form irregular hills attaining a height of some 200-250 ft. The Bermudas consist of aeolian limestones (cf. The fringing islands which encircle the islands, especially on the north and west, leave a few deep passages wide enough to admit the largest vessels. of the Main Island, and form a semicircle round Castle Harbour.
The remaining members of the group, St George, Paget, Smith, St David, Cooper, Nonsuch, &c., lie N.E. long and about a mile in average width, enclosing on the east Harrington or Little Sound, and on the west the Great Sound, which is thickly studded with islets, and protected on the north by the islands of Watford, Boaz, Ireland and Somerset. The largest of the islands is Great Bermuda, or the Main Island, 14 m. The group, consisting of small islands and reefs (which mark the extreme northern range of the coral-building polyps), is of oval form, measuring 22 m. from Cape Hatteras on the American coast. The first newspaper, the Bermuda Gazette, was published in 1784.īermuda is located at 32° 15' N. In 1726 Bishop George Berkeley chose the Bermudas as the seat of his projected missionary establishment. The first source of colonial wealth was the growing of tobacco, but the curing industry ceased early in the 18th century. In 1612 the Bermudas were granted to an offshoot of the Virginia Company, which consisted of 120 persons, 60 of whom, under the command of Henry More, proceeded to the islands. Sir George, from whom the islands took the alternative name of Somers, was the first who established a settlement upon them, but he died before he had fully accomplished his design. Henry May, an Englishman, suffered the same fate in 1593 and lastly, Sir George Somers shared the destiny of the two preceding navigators in 1609. The discovery of the Bermudas resulted from the shipwreck of Juan Bermudez, a Spaniard (whose name they now bear), when on a voyage from Spain to Cuba with a cargo of hogs, early in the 16th century. Bermuda or the Bermudas are a group of islands in the Atlantic Ocean, forming a British colony.
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