350 ALEXANDER AGASSIZ 



one- third of the way to the Marquesas, just inside the 

 tropics, on the way for a small island the position of 

 which is quite doubtful on the charts, and in fact we 

 shall probably find that it does not exist at all. The 

 first two days out of San Francisco we did not attempt 

 any work. We were getting ready, and besides we were 

 in ground which had been sounded and which was near 

 enough San Francisco to be worked from there later 

 very conveniently. On the third day we put in our first 

 sounding in a little over 1900 fathoms and lost our 

 thermometer and collecting cup. . . . But what was 

 still worse we smashed our sounding reel from the great 

 pressure that it is subject to in winding the wire ; it 

 collapsed entirely when we had wound up about 1700 

 fathoms ; on examining it we found the casting was 

 very defective, of poor quality of steel. . . . But what 

 was our dismay on examining the spare cast steel reel 

 to find it no better quality than the first, and sure enough 

 the next day on making a sounding in 2350 fathoms 

 that went all to pieces, and leaves us with only two old- 

 fashioned reels on which we wound the sounding wire 

 from the broken reels and have fortunately had no mis- 

 hap, and I hope we shall not have any more breakages 

 on that score, for if we do we might as well have char- 

 tered a small boat and gone to work independently of 

 the Albatross, as in the islands she will be no better 

 than any boat of mine. 



The weather has been fine so far ; neither Max nor I 

 have been seasick, though since we struck the trades the 

 sea has run high, but we are going with it. It is, how- 

 ever, too rough to trawl at such deep water as we get 

 at twenty-five hundred fathoms, so that we only tow 

 down to five to six hundred fathoms and sound, and 



