BAHAMA ISLANDS.
Lady Edith Blake, wife of Sir Henry Arthur Blake, formerly governor of the Bahama islands, has kindly furnished the following information and sketches (Figs. 100, 101, and 102), relating to petroglyphs in the Bahama islands. Lady Blake says:
The carvings are on the walls of an “Indian hole,” also called Hartford cave, in the northern shore of a small island in Rum Cay, one of the Bahama group. Rum Cay measures 5 miles from north to south and about 8 or 9 from east to west. It lies 20 miles northwest of Watlings island, the San Salvador of Columbus.
The cave is situated on the seashore about a mile and a half from the western point of the island to the eastward of a bluff, close to which is a “puffing hole,” through which the waves blow when the seas roll in from the north. The cave is semicircular in shape and about 20 yards in depth, and is partially filled with debris of rocks, earth, and sand.
Fig. 100.—Petroglyphs in the Bahamas.
Like all rocks of which the Bahamas are formed, those in Hartford cave are a mixture of coral, detritus, and shell, very rough and full of cracks and indentations, and in this cave, from the constant damp of filtration and spray, the walls were coated with a deposit of lime and salt, so that it would be impossible to say if the carvings had been colored. If ever they had been, any traces of coloring must long have disappeared. Besides the markings copied there were others scattered over the walls of the cave, most of which were circles apparently resembling human faces. Unfortunately, we neglected to measure the carvings, but I should judge the circles or faces to be 10 inches or more across, while others of the figures must have been a foot and a half in length, and the markings must have been nearly half an inch in depth, cut into the face of the rock, and seemed to us such as might have been made with a sharp stone implement. Although we visited numerous caves in the various islands of the Bahamas, in no other did we find any appearance of markings or carvings on the walls, nor could we hear of any reported to have such markings.
Fig. 101.—Petroglyphs in the Bahamas.