THE MIDWAY ISLANDS AS WE LEFT THEM[ToList]
After toiling laboriously and constantly for six months, using large quantities of powder and fuse, the result now is a passage through the bar fifteen feet in width and four hundred feet in length, whereas one hundred and seventy feet in width is estimated as essential. A proper completion would call for a much larger appropriation.
During the month of April the thermometer ranged from 68 degrees at sunrise to 86 degrees at noon and 80 degrees at sundown. The prevailing winds during the summer months were the northeast trades, varying from northeast to east southeast.
A cause of much annoyance has been the drifting of sand during high winds, when it flies like driven snow, cutting the face and hands. (This was so great an annoyance that on our first trip to Honolulu I purchased for each person a pair of goggles to protect the eyes.)
Taking into consideration the dangers of navigation in a neighborhood abounding with these coral reefs, the fact that they are visible but a short distance only in clear weather, and that an entrance to the lagoon could only be made in a smooth sea, it really seems a questionable undertaking to attempt the formation of an anchorage here for the large steamers of the Pacific Mail Company.
When the westerly gales blow, the mouth of the lagoon being, as in most coral islands, on that side, the sea breaks heavily all over the lagoon and no work can be done. On one occasion the workmen were returning to the island from the entrance to the channel when one of these gales came on and, as one of them told me, "It was a mighty big conundrum at one time whether we would ever reach the shore."