Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 66.djvu/406

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402
POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

limestone rock which everywhere abounds. This is cut into blocks a foot or more in length, eight or ten inches wide and of different thicknesses.

Fig. 4. Great Sound, looking South from Spanish Point.[1]

Even the roof is made of thin overlapping slabs of the same rock supported by slats that rest on wooden rafters. The houses, roof

Fig. 5. Harrington Sound. Photograph by A. H. Verrill.

and wall, are whitewashed at frequent intervals, usually twice a year. The rain that falls on the roofs is carefully collected in covered cisterns, for it is the only source of fresh water in the islands, since


  1. I am greatly indebted to Professor A. E. Verrill for the use of about half of the figures, those which he has furnished having been taken from The Transactions of the Connecticut Academy of Science and from his 'The Bermuda Islands,' New Haven, 1902, and 'Zoology of the Bermudas,' New Haven, 1903.