Two Years Before the Mast
The system of naming the streets and numbering the houses, they easily
understood, and the utility of it. They had a great desire to see
America, but were afraid of doubling Cape Horn, for they suffer much in
cold weather, and had heard dreadful accounts of the Cape, from those
of their number who had been round it.
They smoke a great deal, though not much at a time; using pipes with
large bowls, and very short stems, or no stems at all. These, they
light, and putting them to their mouths, take a long draught, getting
their mouths as full as they can hold, and their cheeks distended, and
then let it slowly out through their mouths and nostrils. The pipe is
then passed to others, who draw, in the same manner, one pipe-full
serving for half a dozen. They never take short, continuous draughts,
like Europeans, but one of these "Oahu puffs," as the sailors call
them, serves for an hour or two, until some one else lights his pipe,
and it is passed round in the same manner. Each Kanaka on the beach had
a pipe, flint, steel, tinder, a hand of tobacco, and a jack-knife,
which he always carried about with him.
That which strikes a stranger most peculiarly is their style of
singing. They run on, in a low, guttural, monotonous sort of chant,
their lips and tongues seeming hardly to move, and the sounds modulated
solely in the throat. There is very little tune to it, and the words,
so far as I could learn, are extempore. They sing about persons and
things which are around them, and adopt this method when they do not
wish to be understood by any but themselves; and it is very effectual,
for with the most careful attention I never could detect a word that I
knew. I have often heard Mr. Mannini, who was the most noted
improvisatore among them, sing for an hour together, when at work in
the midst of Americans and Englishmen; and, by the occasional shouts
and laughter of the Kanakas, who were at a distance, it was evident
that he was singing about the different men that he was at work with.
They have great powers of ridicule, and are excellent mimics; many of
them discovering and imitating the peculiarities of our own people,
before we had seen them ourselves.
These were the people with whom I was to spend a few months; and who,
with the exception of the officer, Nicholas the Frenchman, and the boy,
made the whole population of the beach. I ought, perhaps, to except
the dogs, for they were an important part of our settlement. Some of
the first vessels brought dogs out with them, who, for convenience,
were left ashore, and there multiplied, until they came to be a great
people. While I was on the beach, the average number was about forty,
and probably an equal, or greater number are drowned, or killed in some
other way, every year. They are very useful in guarding the beach, the
Indians being afraid to come down at night; for it was impossible for
any one to get within half a mile of the hide-houses without a general
alarm. The father of the colony, old Sachem, so called from the ship
in which he was brought out, died while I was there, full of years, and
was honorably buried. Hogs, and a few chickens, were the rest of the
animal tribe, and formed, like the dogs, a common company, though they
were all known and marked, and usually fed at the houses to which they
belonged.
I had been but a few hours on the beach, and the Pilgrim was hardly out
of sight, when the cry of "Sail ho!" was raised, and a small
hermaphrodite brig rounded the point, bore up into the harbor, and came
to anchor. It was the Mexican brig Fazio, which we had left at San
Pedro, and which had come down to land her tallow, try it all over, and
make new bags, and then take it in, and leave the coast. They moored
ship, erected their try-works on shore, put up a small tent, in which
they all lived, and commenced operations. They made an addition to our
society, and we spent many evenings in their tent, where, amid the
Babel of English, Spanish, French, Indian, and Kanaka, we found some
words that we could understand in common.
The morning after my landing, I began the duties of hide-curing. In
order to understand these, it will be necessary to give the whole
history of a hide, from the time it is taken from a bullock until it is
put on board the vessel to be carried to Boston. When the hide is
taken from the bullock, holes are cut round it, near the edge, by which
it is staked out to dry. In this manner it dries without shrinking.
After they are thus dried in the sun, they are received by the vessels,
and brought down to the depot at San Diego. The vessels land them, and
leave them in large piles near the houses.
Then begins the hide-curer's duty. The first thing is to put them in
soak. This is done by carrying them down at low tide, and making them
fast, in small piles, by ropes, and letting the tide come up and cover
them. Every day we put in soak twenty-five for each man, which, with
us, made an hundred and fifty. There they lie forty-eight hours, when
they are taken out, and rolled up, in wheelbarrows, and thrown into the
vats. These vats contain brine, made very strong; being sea-water,
with great quantities of salt thrown in. This pickles the hides, and
in this they lie forty-eight hours; the use of the sea-water, into
which they are first put, being merely to soften and clean them. From
these vats, they are taken, and lie on a platform twenty-four hours,
and then are spread upon the ground, and carefully stretched and staked
out, so that they may dry smooth. After they were staked, and while yet
wet and soft, we used to go upon them with our knives, and carefully
cut off all the bad parts:--the pieces of meat and fat, which would
corrupt and infect the whole if stowed away in a vessel for many
months, the large flippers, the ears, and all other parts which would
prevent close stowage. This was the most difficult part of our duty: as
it required much skill to take everything necessary off and not to cut
or injure the hide. It was also a long process, as six of us had to
clean an hundred and fifty, most of which required a great deal to be
done to them, as the Spaniards are very careless in skinning their
cattle. Then, too, as we cleaned them while they were staked out, we
were obliged to kneel down upon them, which always gives beginners the
back-ache. The first day, I was so slow and awkward that I cleaned only
eight; at the end of a few days I doubled my number; and in a fortnight
or three weeks, could keep up with the others, and clean my
proportion--twenty-five.
This cleaning must be got through with before noon; for by that time
they get too dry. After the sun has been upon them a few hours, they
are carefully gone over with scrapers, to get off all the grease which
the sun brings out. This being done, the stakes are pulled up, and the
hides carefully doubled, with the hair side out, and left to dry.
About the middle of the afternoon they are turned upon the other side,
and at sundown piled up and covered over. The next day they are spread
out and opened again, and at night, if fully dry, are thrown upon a
long, horizontal pole, five at a time, and beat with flails. This
takes all the dust from them. Then, being salted, scraped, cleaned,
dried, and beaten, they are stowed away in the house. Here ends their
history, except that they are taken out again when the vessel is ready
to go home, beaten, stowed away on board, carried to Boston, tanned,
made into shoes and other articles for which leather is used; and many
of them, very probably, in the end, brought back again to California in
the shape of shoes, and worn out in pursuit of other bullocks, or in
the curing of other hides.
By putting an hundred and fifty in soak every day, we had the same
number at each stage of curing, on each day; so that we had, every day,
the same work to do upon the same number: an hundred and fifty to put
in soak; an hundred and fifty to wash out and put in the vat; the same
number to haul from the vat and put on the platform to drain; the same
number to spread and stake out and clean; and the same number to beat
and stow away in the home. I ought to except Sunday; for, by a
prescription which no captain or agent has yet ventured to break in
upon, Sunday has been a day of leisure on the beach for years. On
Saturday night, the hides, in every stage of progress, are carefully
covered up, and not uncovered until Monday morning. On Sundays we had
absolutely no work to do, unless it was to kill a bullock, which was
sent down for our use about once a week, and sometimes came on Sunday.
Another good arrangement was, that we had just so much work to do, and
when that was through, the time was our own. Knowing this, we worked
hard, and needed no driving. We "turned out" every morning at the
first signs of daylight, and allowing a short time, about eight
o'clock, for breakfast, generally got through our labor between one and
two o'clock, when we dined, and had the rest of the time to ourselves;
until just before sundown, when we beat the dry hides and put them in
the house, and covered over all the others. By this means we had about
three hours to ourselves every afternoon; and at sundown we had our
supper, and our work was done for the day. There was no watch to stand,
and no topsails to reef. The evenings we generally spent at one
another's houses, and I often went up and spent an hour or so at the
oven; which was called the "Kanaka Hotel," and the "Oahu Coffee-house."
Immediately after dinner we usually took a short siésta to make up for
our early rising, and spent the rest of the afternoon according to our
own fancies. I generally read, wrote, and made or mended clothes; for
necessity, the mother of invention, had taught me these two latter
arts. The Kanakas went up to the oven, and spent the time in sleeping,
talking, and smoking; and my messmate, Nicholas, who neither knew how
to read or write, passed away the time by a long siésta, two or three
smokes with his pipe, and a paséo to the other houses. This leisure
time is never interfered with, for the captains know that the men earn
it by working hard and fast, and that if they interfered with it, the
men could easily make their twenty-five hides apiece last through the
day. We were pretty independent, too, for the master of the
house--"capitan de la casa"--had nothing to say to us, except when we
were at work on the hides, and although we could not go up to the town
without his permission, this was seldom or never refused.
The great weight of the wet hides, which we were obliged to roll about
in wheelbarrows; the continual stooping upon those which were pegged
out to be cleaned; and the smell of the vats, into which we were often
obliged to get, knee-deep, to press down the hides; all made the work
disagreeable and fatiguing;--but we soon got hardened to it, and the
comparative independence of our life reconciled us to it; for there was
nobody to haze us and find fault; and when we got through, we had only
to wash and change our clothes, and our time was our own. There was,
however, one exception to the time's being our own; which was, that on
two afternoons of every week we were obliged to go off and get wood,
for the cook to use in the galley. Wood is very scarce in the vicinity
of San Diego; there being no trees of any size, for miles. In the
town, the inhabitants burn the small wood which grows in thickets, and
for which they send out Indians, in large numbers, every few days.
Fortunately, the climate is so fine that they had no need of a fire in
their houses, and only use it for cooking. With us the getting of wood
was a great trouble; for all that in the vicinity of the houses had
been cut down, and we were obliged to go off a mile or two, and to