Long Island

Long Island is an island in the Caribbean which belongs to the Bahamas. It is about 130 km long but only 6 km wide at its widest point, which makes a total area of 596 km². While the southern part is flat with swamplands, beaches, and flat hills, the north has steep rocky headlands and is noted for its caves, which have played a major role in the island's history. It was inhabited by Lucayans, the original inhabitants of the Bahamas before the arrival of Europeans. The local tribe was named Taino and they used the caves for ceremonial use and probably also as a shelter. The natives were seized by the Spanish around 1500 and sold as slaves to Hispaniola and Cuba, and then the island was uninhabited.

The island was re-inhabited by Loyalists fleeing the American Revolution from New England and New Jersey in the 1760s, in the 1790s also settlers from the Carolinas arrived. This second wave of settlers tried to erect cotton plantations, but this did not work very well, and so most of them had collapsed and been abandoned before the abolition of slavery in 1834. The agriculture which worked well on the island is typical for karst areas. It is called pot-hole style farming. The soil on the limestone rocks is thin and generally inhospitable, but in all kinds of dolines, the good top soil collects. Those are used for farming and are usually able to generate enough excess produce to sell their fruits and vegetables throughout the Bahamas.

The limestone on Long Island is mostly eolianite or aeolianite limestone deposited by aeolian processes. The socalled coastal limestone is consisting of carbonate of shallow marine biogenic origin, transported by the wind, forming coastal dunes and then lithified.