The American flying boats were at Trepassey, ready to start for the Azores, and most of the American correspondents had left St. John's to visit them. The United States airship _N. C. 5_ had flown to St. John's some days before our arrival. She came in a fog, after wandering over the neighborhood of Newfoundland for some hours, having lost herself, it was reported, owing to an error of 180° in the directional wireless bearings given her. She attracted large crowds, ourselves among them, to the bay. Later, we saw the airship steering an erratic course through the Gap, and mentally wished her commander good luck in his transatlantic ambitions. Soon afterwards we heard of her unfortunate break-away and total loss. The departure of the N. C. flying boats sent great excitement into the small company of Britishers at the Cochrane Hotel. Hawker, Grieve, Raynham and Morgan discarded caution, and on hearing of the _N. C. 4's_ arrival at the Azores risked exceedingly their chances of success by agreeing to start immediately, in a whole-hearted and plucky effort to gain for Great Britain the honor of the first flight across the Atlantic. The result was immediate disaster for Raynham and Morgan, whose small aërodrome was altogether unsuitable for a "take off" into the then wind, and magnificent failure for Hawker and Grieve, owing to a minor mishap to their engine. Soon after the flight of the American craft, I met Commander Byrd, U. S. N., designer of the bubble sextant for aërial navigation that bears his name. We had an interesting talk on the problems and difficulties of aërial navigation, and I tried to secure from Washington a Byrd sextant. The United States Naval authorities promised to forward one from Washington; but unfortunately, owing to transport difficulties, it reached St. John's after our departure. Nevertheless I am deeply grateful to the United States Navy Department for its courtesy and its offer of help in an enterprise that was foreign to them and non-official. Newfoundland is a hospitable place, but its best friends cannot claim that it is ideal for aviation. The whole of the island has no ground that might be made into a first-class aërodrome. The district around St. John's is especially difficult. Some of the country is wooded, but for the most part it shows a rolling, switchback surface, across which aëroplanes cannot taxi with any degree of smoothness. The soil is soft and dotted with bowlders, for only a light layer of it covers the rock stratum. Another handicap is the prevalence of thick fogs, which roll westward from the sea. For about a week we continued the quest for a landing-ground, and we must have driven over hundreds of miles of very bad road. Growing tired of hiring cars, we bought a second-hand Buick which registered a total mileage of four hundred miles at the time of purchase. Before long we were convinced that the speedometer must have been disconnected previous to the final forty thousand miles.