Waterbury evening Democrat., 1892-10-20

pilot or the Bahamas; borrowed an American flag of the consul, and with the stars and stripes flying at masthead steamed away.
 A day and night of alternating calm and storm, through rocky passages and over dangerous shoals, and we were at Cat island, which Washington Irving made famous and our old geographies solemnly confirmed as the San Salvador of Columbus. For half day we steamed along the coast of Cat island, and ex- amined it very carefully. It bears no resem mblance whatever to the island which Columbus described in his jour nal. For fifty years it has been San 1 Salvador under false pretenses.
 In the afternoon we reached Watlings. Palm trees and hay vistas, thatched huts and outlying reefs over which the surf broke lazily marked it's shores. A boat at once put off to us. It contained all the officials of the island-the local magistrate, the port officer, the post master, the sheriff, the colonel of the militia and many more-all in the per son of Captain Maxwell Nairn, the only white resident of the island, a veritable Pooh Bah, monarch of a coral isle. His salary is $200 year, and he has been there thirty years.
 | Captain Nairn became our guide, counselor, friend and foeman. With him we explored the island. A coral rock it is, dozen miles long and half as broad, containing large lagoons of brackish water, covered with tropical vegetation, nearly surrounded by reefs Eight hundred negroes live here, tilling altogether probably a score of acres of land, subsisting principally on fish and other sea food. They are an honest, | pious, temperate people. Their chief failing is predisposition toward piracy, and woe to the cargo>of the ship that is wrecked upon their shores. This pirat- ical tendency they came naturally by, for this coral island was once the rendez- vous of infamous Blue Beard, and some of these poor people are no doubt his direct descendants.
 But l could see little in this island save Christopher Columbus. At every turn the great discoverer was suggested. The salt lagoon appeared to echo back his name; the sands of the shore seemed to bear the impress of his feet; the surf breaking over the reefs chanted the ere Deum" in imitation of Columbus himself The spirit of Columbus dominates every thing in Watlings, overshadows every thing, leaves nothing else to be thought of or written about.
 And no wonder. Here was everything that Columbus described in his journal the "large lagoon in the middle of the island," the luxuriant verdure, the "reefs running all round that island, the hills near the shore, the "piece ol land like an island, yet which is not al island, but could easily be made one" as an admirable sight for fort; the harbo1 lying hard by, in which "all the ships o1 Christendom could lie." All these an6 many more of the things which Colum bus had described we found, and at frs knew instinctively, and later proved tC mathematical certainty, that this Wal the birthplace of the New World.
 A little bay, two miles from the 'piec' of land like an island," 1 chose afte1 much exploration as the very spot a which the landing was made. That thi
 island was the San Salvador of Colum
 bus know; that this pretty bay, witt it's overhanging headland and shining beach, was the more particular scene O the discovery 1 believe. In the natur
 of things it cannot be proved, thougl there is much in its favor. Near it is
 high hill which Columbus probably frs
 saw in the moonlight of that fatefu morning. It is the first bit of coast to tn
 south, free enough from reefs to permi
 safe landing. It is at a point whence Co
 lumbus would have rowed north north
 easterly to see the other side of tn , island" as he says he did the secont morning after his arrival, on this occa
 sion discovering the "piece of land ik
 an island" and the wonderful harbor ''i1 which the water is still as in we'll"
 On the promontory which lifted it
 head above the little bay we erected memorial It was constructed of cora
 limestone found hard by. Thirty ma
 tive workmen were employed cutting roads with their machetes, bringing fo1
 ward materials, mixing mortar and car rying cement up the hillside. Skillfu i boatmen brought supplies from tn | steamer through the dangerous cora reef The American flag foated from
 staff as we worked, and the monumen , grew day by day. The sun beat wit , tropical tierceness; our drinking wate
 was dipped out of the hollows of the rocks
 warm and brackish. But no one fell ill
 and finally the work was finished. , | had been we'll done. Plenty of cemen bound the stones firmly together. Tn | result was beautiful. In the coral lime stone are all the tints of the rainbow
 all the marine forms Land and sea tC l gether had built memorial to Colum A