We Had Heard Rumors Of Such A Ship To Follow Us, Which Had Leaked Out From The Captain And Mate, But We Passed Them By As Mere "Yarns," Till Our Arrival, When They Were Confirmed By The Letters Which We Brought From The Owners To Their Agent.

The ship California, belonging to the same firm, had been nearly two years on the coast; had collected a

Full cargo, and was now at San Diego, from which port she was expected to sail in a few weeks for Boston; and we were to collect all the hides we could, and deposit them at San Diego, when the new ship, which would carry forty thousand, was to be filled and sent home; and then we were to begin anew, and collect our own cargo. Here was a gloomy prospect before us, indeed. The California had been twenty months on the coast, and the Lagoda, a smaller ship, carrying only thirty-one or thirty-two thousand, had been two years getting her cargo; and we were to collect a cargo of forty thousand beside our own, which would be twelve or fifteen thousand; and hides were said to be growing scarcer. Then, too, this ship, which had been to us a worse phantom than any flying Dutchman, was no phantom, or ideal thing, but had been reduced to a certainty; so much so that a name was given her, and it was said that she was to be the Alert, a well-known India-man, which was expected in Boston in a few months, when we sailed.

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