Out of about seventy eclipses of the sun which have occurred somewhere in the world within the nineteenth century, there have been only eight total eclipses of more or less duration visible on the North American continent. The others happened in places often remote from civilization, and sometimes in entirely inaccessible localities, as over the ocean areas. The difficulty of transporting heavy baggage to the remote parts of Asia, Africa, or South America is such as to preclude all but a few scientists from any effort to observe eclipses. The writer was much impressed with the formidable nature of undertaking to establish eclipse stations in places which are distant from centers of population by his own experience on the West African Eclipse Expedition, sent out by the United States Government, for the eclipse of December 22, 1889, to Cape Ledo, on the west coast of Angola, about seventy miles south of St. Paul de Loanda. Nearly eight months were consumed in the course of the preparations at home and in the voyage out and back. The expedition, it should be said, however, went to Cape Town, South Africa, and halted also at St. Helena, Ascension Island, and Barbados for magnetic and gravity observations, so that all this time should not be charged to the eclipse proper. We sailed in the old frigate Pensacola, the companion to Farragut’s flagship, the Hartford, with Captain Yates. In earlier days Admiral Dewey commanded this ship, and the expedition was fitted out while he was in charge of the Bureau of Equipment at Washington. The same fine courtesy that has become so well known to his countrymen was at that time extended to all the members of the expedition.