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National Geographic : 1982 Sep
Contents
north to these islands to escape the barbarity of the Caribs-who were not only fearsome to see but also cannibalistic. COLUMBUS FIRST LANDED on the island the Indians called Guanahani on October 12, 1492. His first order of business was to change the name to San Salvador. His second was to get to know the locals. "They are so... free with all they possess, that no one would believe it without having seen it," he reported to the Spanish sovereigns. "Of anything they have, if you ask them for it, they . .. invite the person to share it, and show as much love as if they were giving their hearts." So fine a people were they that Columbus deemed them wor thy of serving as slaves to the Spaniards. Within 30 years he and his successors had managed to extinguish the islands' Arawaks. For the next century or so no one lived on the islands, and there were few visitors. One, briefly, was Ponce de Leon, who sailed uncertainly among the islands in search of the Fountain of Youth before turning his quest to Florida. Then, in the 1640s, a band of Bermudi ans, dissatisfied with religious conditions in their adopted home, sailed south to the Bahamas and established a colony. They dubbed themselves Eleutherian Adventur ers ("eleutheria" has its root in the Greek word for "freedom"), and their island came to be called Eleuthera. Other Bermudians, with interests other than religious, settled New Providence is land, for it offered three commodities prized by seagoing folk: shipwrecks to salvage (it was beside major shipping lanes), ambergris to sell, and salt. As the years went by, New Providence became attractive to still anoth er group-pirates-for it had a superb har bor and a marked absence of government. Governor after governor had failed to suppress the pirates and inspire the popula tion to gainful labor. Finally, in 1718, the English sent Capt. Woodes Rogers to Nassau to try his hand as governor. A man of discipline, tenacity, and impeccable integrity, he offered amnesty to those pirates who would go straight, chased away those who refused, and hanged those who accepted and then reneged. Rogers' 378 feats inspired a motto for the Bahamas: Expulsis Piratis Restituta Commercia (Pi rates Expelled, Commerce Restored). No sooner had the excitement of piracy died down than tourism began. The first tourists, in the 1720s, were sickly gentry fol lowing their doctors' advice to repair to a more salubrious climate. Tourism hardly exploded into a major industry: 150 years later, in 1873, there was jubilation when the number of tourists soared to 500. But tour ism has endured in the face of considerable adversity, and it now provides two-thirds of the country's gross national product. NOTHER INDUSTRY critical to the Bahamas is fishing. Thousands of Ba hamians are nourished or supported by what they harvest from the sea, but in some areas the islands' stocks of grouper, spiny lobster, and conch are being fished out-because of inadequate resource man agement, by fishermen who ignore the regu lations that do exist, and by poachers from other countries, largely Cuban Americans from Florida. Off Eleuthera's northern tip, in Spanish Wells, I was told that the price of conch had recently risen to two dollars apiece, a mani fold increase in only a few years. I heard a bitter dispute between a man who believed the price reflected scarcity of conch and a man who blamed inflation, which he placed directly at government's door: "Dem damn gummints dey take it all for dey selves to spend on vimmin." Other communities, anxious to prevent overfishing, are establishing their own unof ficial game preserves, independent of the government, at times enforced with vigi lante fervor. Not all private preserves are for fishermen, however; at least some are dedicated to divers and snorkelers. On Harbour Island, to the east of Eleu thera, a small resort hotel called the Romora Bay Club has been hacked out of the tropical undergrowth and constructed with care and taste over many years by an American named Roy Schmidt. Romora Bay offers most of the standard Bahamian fare-sun, serenity, beauty, and beaches-plus some of the best scuba diving in the Bahamas. What makes the diving off Harbour Is land particularly (Continuedon page 383) NationalGeographic, September 1982
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