Howland and Baker are coral islets, not atolls, close to the equator, with no lagoons and with deep water all around them. Howland later became famous in the tragedy of Amelia Earhart, for whom the Coast Guard prepared an airfield on the island. These islands had been guano diggings for parties from Honolulu fifty years earlier, and we found old cisterns and tracks. The islands were inhabited by thousands of goonies (gannets), man-of-war birds, and terns. In some places they covered the ground with their nests, eggs, and young, rising noisily in terrifying swarms as we walked among them. The land was perfectly flat brown guano and red weeds, with beaches of coral boulders and _Tridacna_, or giant clams, the highest bit ridges on the windward side. The easterly trade winds blew a powerful gale most of the time, and our ship had to land us on the leeward beaches, where we made our camp in a line of tents. The staff was divided into pairs for each tent, and Filipino mess boys did the cooking. Landing was arduous, for there was heavy surf, even on the leeward side, and it was necessary to have a man swim in with a line in his teeth. The swimmer, Ted Dranga, made the line fast between a buoy and the shore, then built a signal fire while the ship stood off. Men and baggage were loaded into a skiff and hauled ashore by the sailor in the bow, who pulled, hand over hand, on the rope from the buoy, when the waves were favorable. The ship had to drift away each night and come back, as there was no anchorage. A few stunted kou trees still survived from guano-digging days, and numerous grasses and fleshy-leaved salt weeds grew. The beaches were covered with rats, hermit crabs, and some white ghost crabs. The ghost crabs were seen at night flittering down into the water when a flashlight was turned on the waves. The hermit crabs, with borrowed shells, came clanking over the canvas floor under our cots at night; and as one walked along the beach with a flashlight, Polynesian rats pattered away in all directions. They had been brought by the guano schooners and doubtless lived on shellfish, birds, eggs, and fledglings. The principal products of this expedition were notes, pictures, maps, and collections. Within the next few years we were to combine expeditions with experimentation in the organization of new observatories in California and Alaska.