But The Greatest Trouble Was With The Large Boxes Of
Sugar.
These, we had to place upon oars, and lifting them up rest
the oars upon our shoulders, and creep slowly up the hill with the
gait of a funeral procession.
After an hour or two of hard work,
we got them all up, and found the carts standing full of hides,
which we had to unload, and also to load again with our own goods;
the lazy Indians, who came down with them, squatting down on their
hams, looking on, doing nothing, and when we asked them to help us,
only shaking their heads, or drawling out "no quiero."
Having loaded the carts, we started up the Indians, who went
off, one on each side of the oxen, with long sticks, sharpened at
the end, to punch them with. This is one of the means of saving
labor in California; - two Indians to two oxen. Now, the hides
were to be got down; and for this purpose, we brought the boat
round to a place where the hill was steeper, and threw them down,
letting them slide over the slope. Many of them lodged, and we
had to let ourselves down and set them agoing again; and in this
way got covered with dust, and our clothes torn. After we had
got them all down, we were obliged to take them on our heads,
and walk over the stones, and through the water, to the boat.
The water and the stones together would wear out a pair of shoes
a day, and as shoes were very scarce and very dear, we were compelled
to go barefooted.
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