The skilled officer of the royal navy who advised me to take the Barrier Reef passage wrote me that H.M.

S.
_Orlando_ steamed nights as well as days through it, but that I, under sail, would jeopardize my vessel on coral reefs if I undertook to do so.
Confidentially, it would have been no easy matter finding anchorage every night.

The hard work, too, of getting the sloop under way every morning was finished, I had hoped, when she cleared the Strait of Magellan.

Besides that, the best of admiralty charts made it possible to keep on sailing night and day.

Indeed, with a fair wind, and in the clear weather of that season, the way through the Barrier Beef Channel, in all sincerity, was clearer than a highway in a busy city, and by all odds less dangerous.