Shortly after we landed and got ourselves comfortably settled at the Grand Hotel, an ensign from the Newark came to ask when the Commission would receive the Admiral. The hour was set for this formality and when it had been duly disposed of, Captain McCalla called on us unofficially, with much news for our hungry ears from the big world that we had known nothing about for eleven long days. That was before the wireless era when going to sea was really going to sea, and seldom has the world known a more exciting year than 1900. Grim talk about the terrible Boxer insurrection was on every tongue and Captain McCalla told us that the Newark was lying in readiness to proceed to China at an instant’s notice. The British were just then pressing the Boers northward in South Africa, and our own troubles in the Philippines were by no means over. We had nearly seventy thousand troops in the field, and we heard of decisive engagements between the division under General Young and some religious fanatic insurrectos in northern Luzon. We found ourselves feeling very much in touch with big events.