By the third day ever-increasing quantities of sargasso weed appeared and floated past. Torn from their beds along tropical coasts, these bits of weed act as the shelter for multifarious forms of aquatic life which live as long as the weed lives and die when it finally decays. And so, although no sign of bird or other life appeared above the water surface, we were surrounded every moment by thousands of individuals of dozens of species. Our ship was the "Advance" of the American government-controlled Panama R. R. Steamship Company, which operates the service between New York, Haiti and Panama. Two steamers run to Panama via Port-au-Prince, Haiti, three are exclusively for Haitian ports, while the others do not stop at Haiti en route to Panama. Beside the Panama line there is the Dutch line of boats which runs from New York to Haiti on regular sailings, but aside from these two there are no other lines which regularly run ships to Haiti. And so the quickest way of travelling from Haiti to another of the West Indies is via Panama. [Illustration: SIFTING COFFEE ALONG A PRINCIPAL STREET] Coming south, the first land appeared on the fourth day, when the lighthouse of San Salvador, re-named Watling's Island by the British, showed the northern point of land long before the rest of the flat surface was visible. Bird Rock, the Fortune Islands and Castle Island were passed during the next twelve hours, and finally the high mountains of eastern Cuba were twenty miles off our starboard. Before these were out of sight, the peak of Mole St. Nicholas, Haiti, arose on the port bow. But we were by no means yet at Port-au-Prince, our destination, for it is a seven-hour sail from this point to the harbor in the lower part of the bay. The bay itself is over 100 miles long, and in the center of it is the Island of Gonave, 10 by 40 miles, to which all convicts were exiled from Haiti in the French days, and many of whose present inhabitants are descendents of these exiles. After we had passed Gonave, the mountain ranges on both sides became very close and we could see the smoke of many fires high up on their slopes. These fires, we later found out, were those of the charcoal burners, who play an important rôle on the island. The charcoal is obtained by placing the wood which has been gathered under a covering of earth in such a way as to eliminate the undesired gases and leave the charcoal. After sufficient time, the earth is removed and the charcoal carried for miles into town on the backs of "burros." Charcoal is used entirely in Haiti for kitchen fuel. Of the fires we saw in the hills, all were probably not those of charcoal burners, as it is the common thing for the natives to burn off a section of the land which they desire to use and to ascribe the fire to spontaneous combustion.