CHAPTER VII. 

 HARBOR ISLAND AND SPANISH WELLS. 



On Saturday, July ist, our vessel cleared from Key West 

 for the port of Harbor Island. Eleuthera, British West Indies, 

 after having all the water casks refilled with good water 

 at a cost of one cent per gallon. The customs othcials at 

 Key West were extremely courteous, and facilitated our 

 affairs so far as the law would permit. We were gi\'en a 

 hint by one of them that w^ould probably have saved us many 

 a dollar had we been able to act upon it at the proper time. 

 We were told that a ''yachting license" could have been 

 secured before starting, which would have rendered it unnec- 

 essary to enter and clear at the x'arious ports at which we 

 desired to touch, and thus saved a really serious source of 

 delay and annoyance. We had, indeed, inquired at Baltimore 

 if there were not some way to simplify matters, but were told 

 by the brokers that w'e would have to be treated exactly as 

 any trading or passenger vessel. Our informant \\as not an 

 entirely disinterested partv. however, and I should advise any- 

 one who, in the future, desires to charter a vessel for a pur- 

 pose similar to ours, to make ever}- effort to find a way 

 to avoid a part, at least, of the endless red tape, which is 

 doubtless necessary for the interests of the merchant marine, 

 but a useless farce for a scientific expedition. As it was, life 

 was made a burden to some of us while in port by the exac- 

 tions of the custom-house regulations, which seemed to us to 

 bear a very close resemblance to the procedure in the ••circum- 

 locution office," so well depicted by Dickens. 



In the evening we dropped down the channel, but were 

 becalmed before passing Sand Key Light, and anchored for 



