While, therefore, Cradock and his Southern Squadron were steering for the Falkland Islands to make of it a base for their search for the _Dresden_, von Spee’s cruisers were slowly concentrating upon Easter Island. There was no coal at the Falklands—they produce nothing except sheep and the most abominable weather on earth—but it was easy for us to direct colliers thither, and to transform the Islands into a base of supplies. The Germans had a far more difficult task. All through the operations which I am describing, and have still to describe, we were possessed of three great advantages. We had the coal, we had the freedom of communications given by ocean cables and wireless, and we had the sympathy of all those South American neutrals with whom we had to deal. Admiral von Spee and his ships were all through in great difficulties for coal, and would have failed entirely unless the German ships at South American ports had run big risks to seek out and supply him. He was to a large extent cut off from the outside world, for he had no cables, and received little information or assistance from home. The slowness of his movements, both before and after Coronel, may chiefly be explained through his lack of supplies and his ignorance of where we were or of what we were about to do. It is comparatively easy for me now to plot out the movements of the English and German vessels, and to set forth their relative positions at any date. But when the movements were actually in progress the admirals and captains on both sides were very much in the dark. Now and then would come a ray of light which enabled their imagination and judgment to work. Thus the report from the _Ortega_ that she had encountered the _Dresden_ with her two colliers at the Pacific entrance of the Magellan Straits showed that she might be bound for some German rendezvous in the Pacific Ocean. A day or two later came word that the _Scharnhorst_ and _Gneisenau_ had bombarded Tahiti, and that these two powerful cruisers, which had seemed to be so remote from the concern of the South Atlantic Squadron, were already half-way across the wide Pacific, apparently bound for Chili. It was also, of course, known that the _Leipzig_ and _Nürnberg_ were on the west coast of Mexico to the north. Any one who will take a chart of the Pacific and note the positions towards the end of September of von Spee, the _Dresden_, and the _Nürnberg_ and _Leipzig_, will see that the lonely dot marked as Easter Island was pretty nearly the only spot in the vast stretch of water towards which these scattered units could possibly be converging. At least so it seemed at the time, and, in fact, proved to be the case. The _Scharnhorst_ and _Gneisenau_ reached Easter Island early in October, the _Nürnberg_ turned up on the 12th, and later upon the same day the _Dresden_ arrived with her faithful collier the _Baden_. Upon the 14th down came the _Leipzig_ accompanied by colliers carrying 3,000 tons of coal.