From the moment of my arrival I adopted uniform pocket scratch pads with detachable sheets for the use of all employees, insisting that anyone who went to the lava pit should write notes, inscribe the date and hour, tell what he saw, and hand the notes to me. Even Alec Lancaster, whose father was a Cherokee Indian carpenter and whose mother was a mulatto, took notes and learned about the points of the compass and the names of the coves and blowholes of the lava lake in the bottom of the pit. Some of Alec’s notes were very amusing, as when he wrote, “9:30 A.M. April 3, Old Faithful is on her job right sturdy.” However, he quickly learned the correct technical expressions for surface streaming of the lava, brightness of the fountains at night, numbers of the bubble fountains, and places of smoke on the bottom of the pit. At all times Alec was a useful camp man, a good cook, and a fearless climber of cliffs. When it came to making and using rope ladders with hickory rungs for descent down a 200-foot cliff to the edge of the lava, Alec was the first to volunteer. He drove spikes into cracks in the rock and tested out the ladders, surrounded by smoke. This was done in June and December of 1912, when the gas chemists of the Carnegie Institution were conducted to the bottom to collect gases, by pumps and vacuum tubes, from flaming spatter cones. I hope this introduction gives some idea of what the first year of the Observatory accomplished. Meanwhile problems of policy and of the publishing of results crowded upon me thick and fast. The notes of all employees had to be compiled; critical scientific visitors had to be convinced of the usefulness of the new effort; the Massachusetts Tech and Honolulu sponsors had to be given suitable reports; a permanent record book, reproducing surveys, notes, and photographs, had to be devised; and I had to make occasional journeys to California, Boston, and Washington for contact with the Government, with scientific societies, and with scientific magazines.