West Indies, Spanish Indias Occidentales, French Indes Occidentales, Dutch West-Indië, crescent-fashioned group of islands more than 2,000 miles (3,two hundred km) long keeping apart the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea, to the west and south, from the Atlantic Ocean, to the east and north.
From the peninsula of Florida at the mainland of the us, the islands stretch 1,200 miles (1,900 km) southeastward, then 500 miles (800 km) south, then west along the north coast of Venezuela on the South American mainland.
