Then Came A Half A Dozen Newspapers,
The Last Of Which Gave Notice Of Thanksgiving, And Of The Clearance
Of
"Ship Alert, Edward H. Faucon, master, for Callao and California,
by Bryant, Sturgis & Co." No one has ever been on
Distant voyages,
and after a long absence received a newspaper from home, who cannot
understand the delight that they give one. I read every part of them
- the houses to let; things lost or stolen; auction sales, and all.
Nothing carries you so entirely to a place, and makes you feel so
perfectly at home, as a newspaper. The very name of "Boston Daily
Advertiser" "sounded hospitably upon the ear."
The Pilgrim discharged her hides, which set us at work again,
and in a few days we were in the old routine of dry hides - wet
hides - cleaning - beating, etc. Captain Faucon came quietly up to
me, as I was at work, with my knife, cutting the meat from a dirty
hide, asked me how I liked California, and repeated - "Tityre, tu
patulae recubans sub tegmine fagi." Very apropos, thought I, and,
at the same time, serves to show that you understand Latin.
However, a kind word from a captain is a thing not to be slighted;
so I answered him civilly, and made the most of it.
Saturday, July 11th. The Pilgrim set sail for the windward, and left
us to go on in our old way. Having laid in such a supply of wood,
and the days being now long, and invariably pleasant, we had a
good deal of time to ourselves. All the duck I received from home,
I soon made up into trowsers and frocks, and displayed, every Sunday,
a complete suit of my own make, from head to foot, having formed
the remnants of the duck into a cap. Reading, mending, sleeping,
with occasional excursions into the bush, with the dogs, in search
of coati, hares, and rabbits, or to encounter a rattlesnake, and now
and then a visit to the Presidio, filled up our spare time after
hide-curing was over for the day. Another amusement, which we
sometimes indulged in, was "burning the water" for craw-fish.
For this purpose, we procured a pair of grains, with a long staff
like a harpoon, and making torches with tarred rope twisted round a
long pine stick, took the only boat on the beach, a small skiff,
and with a torch-bearer in the bow, a steersman in the stern, and one
man on each side with the grains, went off, on dark nights, to burn
the water. This is fine sport. Keeping within a few rods of the
shore, where the water is not more than three or four feet deep,
with a clear sandy bottom, the torches light everything up so that one
could almost have seen a pin among the grains of sand. The craw-fish
are an easy prey, and we used soon to get a load of them. The other
fish were more difficult to catch, yet we frequently speared a number
of them, of various kinds and sizes.
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