Both possibilities were brought together in the Eastern Mediterranean with its multitude of islands, its broken coastline, and its many safe harbors.

Here I saw for the first time a species of Sciadophyllum, one of the most singular trees of the eastern coastline of tropical Australia; a slender stem, about thirty feet in height, gives off a few branches with immense digitate dark and glossy leaves and long spike-like racemes of small scarlet flowers, a great resort for insects and insect-feeding birds.

Its chief value to the United States is strategical; it will mobilize their fleet and enable them to concentrate it upon either their eastern or their western coastline.