Cat Island (Bahamas)

Cat Iceland is an island and a district of the Bahamas. Here is the highest point of the island nation, the 63 m meter Mount Alvernia, on whose summit the monastery The Hermitage stands. The builders of this Hermitage is an English Franciscan friar named John Cyril Hawes aka Brother Jerome. Before he retired to Cat Iceland, he worked in Western Australia as the Franciscans.

The first European settlers were Loyalists who fled the American Revolution and the island in 1783 reached. The island is possibly after Arthur Catt, a pirate, named or she bears her name due to the one-time large population of feral cats.

Previously, the cotton plantations made ​​from the prosperity of the island, but today is slash and burn for the islanders the Hauptlebensart. Economically viable is the " harvest " of Kaskarilla bark. It is collected and then shipped to Italy, where it is a major component of pharmaceuticals, fragrances and Campari.

The population is about 1,700 and the main settlements are Arthur 's Town (Sidney Poitier grew up here ), Orange Creek and Port Howe.

It was believed for a long time that Cat Iceland, the island Guanahani was, sat on the Christopher Columbus first set foot in the New World until they found irrefutable documents.