The Cordova daily times., 1922-12-28

V government of Australia should de- tail naval vessel to transport the Californian expedition from Free mantle, on the southwest coast of Australia, to Wollal and return. Pegot presented the case to the gov. ernment and the decision was fav- orable.
 The government went much fur ther, in that it volunteered free rail- way and sleeping car transportation from Sydney to Freemantle and re- turn, the camp equipment and the subsistence at Wollal and the ser vices of ten officers and men of the Australian navy to maintain the camp and to assist with the heavy work of mounting and sheltering the in struments.
 When the Crocker Expedition reached Sydney on August 5 it was met by Lieutenant to Commander Quick, who was charged with the duty of personally conducting the astrono- mers all the way to Wollal and re- turn and of administering the living arrangements at Wollal.
 At the eleventh hour the navys plans were changed At Freemantle the astronomers and their many tons of instruments were placed on board the Charon, one of the regular steamers running in eight days to Broome, about 200 miles northeast of Wollal.
 Broome, village of 2,O00 Chinese, Japanese and Malays and 400 whites, is the center of the worlds most noted pearl fisheries. At Broome- there were five expeditions by this time, from California, from Toronto, from Cambridge, England;a from Perth, Australia, and from India-the transfer to an eighty-ton schooner was made A small government steamer lowed the schooner to Vol lal where it anchored three miles from shore on the morning of Au- gust 30.
 We went ashore at once to select the exact spot for the observing station. The naval contingent brought the 70 tons of equipment by means of small lifeboat from the schooner to shallow water near shore, and forty or fifty blacks carried the packages from the boats to dry land. Donkey wagons-tweney-seven donkeys to one wagon-transported them over the sand ridge to camp. Nothing was lost or broken.
 The work of preparing the instru- ments for the eclipse was very heavy, lasting from sunrise to dark, with many extensions into the dark. for securing star photographs need ed in the adjustments and tests of the apparatus.
 The days were hot. but the air was very dry and the nights cool. Every one of the twenty-six days from August SO to September "A was beau tifully clear Notwithstanding the millions of the most insistent and in solent flies ever encountered, and no provision for keeping them out of the kitchen, dining tent and living tents, there were no cases of illness. The locality was naturally healthy in the extreme. The soil resembled that in the bed of an ancient lake, and the impalpable dust raised it's own crop of difficulties in the living and dark room problems.
 Eclipse day, the 21st, was the finest day of all of the twenty-seven days the astronomers were at Wollal; |; and so it was also for the eclipse parties in Central and Eastern Aus. tralia. The only other eclipse sta, tion, that of the Greenwich astron' omers on Christmas Island, had a clouded sky and got no photographs 1; they had been on the island since early April. ..
 Six officers and men of the navy assisted the eight members of the Lick Observatory Expedition. All of | the California instruments worked perfectly and the program went through as planned. The observa- tions were entirely photographic. Efforts to develop the photographs at this station were made on two nights, but given up because of clouds of dust which even moderate breezes carried into the tents.
 While the reloading of the equip ment of the schooner was in prog ress, after the eclipse, genuine wind storm showed what the dust and