Every one was glad to see Magdalena Bay because of this tension. It is a splendid sheet of water, in a general way about fifteen miles long and ten wide, with a narrow entrance and water just deep enough for safe manoeuvring and good anchorages everywhere. A line of sharp crested hills shuts it in from sight of the Pacific. There is only one village on it, consisting of about twenty dwellings, and no commerce in its waters. The shores on the inside are flat and there is a good horizon. The warships of the world might find an anchorage here without crowding one another. It is cut off from the rest of the world, in a desolate, barren region, and was designed apparently by nature for the very purpose of modern target shooting. It seems a pity that American statesmanship years and years ago could not have had the foresight to secure it, when such a course would have been easy, for use of the navy, when a great naval station could have been built up and proper use of the place for strategical purposes could have been made certain. With a naval station on Puget Sound, one in San Francisco and this one on Magdalena Bay, the entire Pacific Coast within our immediate sphere of action would have been within our grasp. Oh, yes; it's a pity--too bad--that we do not own Magdalena Bay. Perhaps an effort to secure it would still be a most desirable field for the exercise of statesmanship. One feels like suggesting to Washington to get busy and keep busy. As soon as the fleet came to anchor there were things doing. On every ship what is known as bore sighting had to be done. That means that a telescope sight had to be inserted in the exact axis of the bore of the gun and the sighting telescopes had to be so adjusted that they were exactly in line with the centre of the gun. It had to be proved scientifically that when the sights of the gun were exactly on a bullseye with their cross wires the centre of the gun was also exactly on the same spot. Every sight on every gun had to be tested and checked up, and it was tedious work. But you couldn't shoot straight without it, and it took hours and hours of most careful adjustment to make sure that all was in perfect condition. Then came the laying out of the ranges. This required careful surveying. An equilateral triangle had to be laid out for each range. Along one side, the base, spar buoys with flags on them had to be fixed, and buoys fixed further along at each end, so as to give a ship an opportunity of getting on the exact range in its turnings. At the apex of each triangle a great raft of thick timbers and poles on it for the targets had to be put in position. All this took time, but it was surprising how quickly the work was done.