Coaling was continued on the 4th. The coal is put into bags at the dump and loaded into lighters, which are taken off by a tug and laid alongside the ship. The work is often awkward on account of the swell. It was a messy business, and the ship soon became covered in every part of her with dust. It took us many days to get really clean again. In order to keep an eye on things, I stayed near the scene of operations. Macklin ascended to the summit, and the following account from his diary is fairly descriptive of the island: I went ashore early with Wilkins, who had with him his camera and cinematograph machine. He was going off with the commandant in a pinnace to an island where there was a large number of birds. I first of all walked about the station and took a number of snapshots, after which I set off up the dusty track leading to Green Hill. It was a blazing hot day, and I wore nothing but singlet, shorts and shoes, and had a good sun hat. This garb was cool and gave a delightful sense of freedom in movement, but it proved, to my cost, to be an inadequate protection from the sun. I passed _en route_ the wireless station, which has been abandoned. Its six immense poles are cemented and stayed in such a manner as to make the removal of them not worth the labour. The track led up a gentle slope over sandy ground that supported a few low-lying shrubs but very little else. Farther towards the summit the vegetation increased a little, with cactus plants and a few aloes. Still farther up an attempt had been made to plant trees along the sides of the track, and, considering the dry, hard nature of the earth, they were growing not badly, but gave little impression of greenery. I continued along the main track till I reached eventually a point marked by the two halves of a boat which had been set up on either side of the road. The gentle slope was now replaced by a more steeply rising mountain face, up which the main track zigzagged so much as to make the total distance a very long one. I accordingly left it for a steeper but straighter track. The air was now fresher, and the higher one climbed the more abundant became the vegetation, which included trees—palms, pines, firs, eucalyptus—and a tree with bright yellow flowers which I did not recognize. There were ferns of several sorts, small flowering shrubs, thistles with a yellow flower, and, higher up the mountain, a species of scarlet hibiscus. Grasshoppers were numerous. They hopped off the ground in much the same manner as an English grasshopper, but were capable of a certain power of flight. I saw also a number of beetles, rats and land-crabs, but animal life generally is scarce.