Cat Island

Cat Island is one of the central Bahamas, and one of its districts, and boasts the nation's highest point. Its Mount Alvernia rises to 206 ft (63 m) and is topped by a monastery called The Hermitage.

Historically, the island gained wealth from cotton plantations, but slash and burn farming is now the main way of life for Cat Islanders. An economic crop is cascarilla bark, which is gathered and shipped to Italy where it becomes a main ingredient in medicines, scents and Campari.

Cat Island may have derived its name from Arthur Catt, the famous British sea captain or notorious pirate (depending on whose side you were on). A competing source for the name are the hordes of wild cats that the English encountered here on arrival in the 1600s. The cats were said to be descendants of their tamer cousins orphaned by the early Spanish colonists in their rush to find the gold of South America.

This boot-shaped, untamed island is one of the most beautiful and fertile of The Bahamas. A lush sanctuary, it provides tranquillity for those seeking an escape from the pressures of modern civilization. Others thought so too, like Father Jerome, a penitent hermit who built a medieval monastery hewn from the limestone cliffs atop 206-foot Mt. Alvernia, a place for meditation. From these high cliffs, there is a marvelous view down to densely-forested foothills and 60 miles of deserted pink-and-white-sand beach.

Cat Island was once home to one of the more prosperous Loyalist colonies of the Out Islands. The island gained its wealth from the numerous cotton plantations established during the 1700s. Now, vine-covered, semi-ruined mansions and stone walls from farms where cattle were penned and pineapples grown, play hide and seek within the tropical flowers, grass and sand. Crumbling remnants of slave villages and artifacts in Arawak caves whisper of a life long past.

Descendants of those early settlers remain in the same towns of their ancestors.