It was a delightful sail! During those twenty-three days I had not spent altogether more than three hours at the helm, including the time occupied in beating into Keeling harbor.

I just lashed the helm and let her go; whether the wind was abeam or dead aft, it was all the same: she always sailed on her course.

No part of the voyage up to this point, taking it by and large, had been so finished as this.[D] [D] Mr.Andrew J.Leach, reporting, July 21, 1897, through Governor Kynnersley of Singapore, to Joseph Chamberlain, Colonial Secretary, said concerning the _Iphegenia's_ visit to the atoll: "As we left the ocean depths of deepest blue and entered the coral circle, the contrast was most remarkable.

The brilliant colors of the waters, transparent to a depth of over thirty feet, now purple, now of the bluest sky-blue, and now green, with the white crests of the waves flashing tinder a brilliant sun, the encircling ...

palm-clad islands, the gaps between which were to the south undiscernible, the white sand shores and the whiter gaps where breakers appeared, and, lastly, the lagoon itself, seven or eight miles across from north to south, and five to six from east to west, presented a sight never to be forgotten.