after a cruise on the west coast of Mexico,--a
trying one for all hands on board as well as for the vessel itself.

The "Alta-Californian" of San Francisco published the following soon
after our return from the Mexican coast. It is all that need be said
of the cruise. We were all very glad to have it behind us and forget
it.

The Saginaw, lately returned from the Mexican coast, had a
pretty severe experience during her short cruise. At Manzanillo
she contracted the coast fever, a form of remittent, and at one
time had twenty-five cases, but a single death, however,
occurring.

On the way up, most of the time under sail, the machinery being
disabled, the voyage was so prolonged that when she arrived at
San Francisco there was not a half-day's allowance of provisions
on board and for many days the officers had been on "ship's
grub."

Our repairs and refitting were but preliminary to another (and the
last) departure of the Saginaw from her native land. Our captain,
Lieutenant-Commander Montgomery Sicard, had received orders to proceed
to the Midway Islands, _via_ Honolulu, and to comply with instructions
that will appear later in these pages. (I should explain here that the
commanding officer of a single vessel is usually addressed as
"Captain," whatever his real rank may be, and I shall use that term
throughout my narrative.)

[Illustration: U.S. STEAMER SAGINAW--FOURTH-RATE
Built at the Navy Yard, Mare Island, California, in 1859]

In a northwesterly direction from the Sandwich Islands there stretches
for over a thousand miles a succession of coral reefs and shoals, with
here and there a sandy islet thrown up by the winds and waves. They
are mostly bare of vegetation beyond a stunted growth of bushes. These
islets are called "atolls" by geographers, and their foundations are
created by the mysterious "polyps" or coral insects.

These atolls abound in the Pacific Ocean, and rising but a few feet
above the surface, surrounded by uncertain and uncharted currents, are
the dread of navigators.

Near the centre of the North Pacific and near the western end of the
chain of atolls above mentioned, are two small sand islands in the
usual lagoon, with a coral reef enclosing both. They were discovered
by an American captain, N.C. Brooks, of the Hawaiian bark Gambia, and
by him reported; were subsequently visited by the United States
Steamer Lackawanna and surveyed for char