Two Years Before the Mast
side, is a high point, upon which the presidio is built. Behind this,
is the harbor in which trading vessels anchor, and near it, the mission
of San Francisco, and a newly begun settlement, mostly of Yankee
Californians, called Yerba Buena, which promises well. Here, at
anchor, and the only vessel, was a brig under Russian colors, from
Asitka, in Russian America, which had come down to winter, and to take
in a supply of tallow and grain, great quantities of which latter
article are raised in the missions at the head of the bay. The second
day after our arrival, we went on board the brig, it being Sunday, as a
matter of curiosity; and there was enough there to gratify it. Though
no larger than the Pilgrim, she had five or six officers, and a crew of
between twenty and thirty; and such a stupid and greasy-looking set, I
certainly never saw before. Although it was quite comfortable weather,
and we had nothing on but straw hats, shirts, and duck trowsers, and
were barefooted, they had, every man of them, double-soled boots,
coming up to the knees, and well greased; thick woolen trowsers,
frocks, waistcoats, pea-jackets, woolen caps, and everything in true
Nova Zembla rig; and in the warmest days they made no change. The
clothing of one of these men would weigh nearly as much as that of half
our crew. They had brutish faces, looked like the antipodes of
sailors, and apparently dealt in nothing but grease. They lived upon
grease; eat it, drank it, slept in the midst of it, and their clothes
were covered with it. To a Russian, grease is the greatest luxury.
They looked with greedy eyes upon the tallow-bags as they were taken
into the vessel, and, no doubt, would have eaten one up whole, had not
the officer kept watch over it. The grease seemed actually coming
through their pores, and out in their hair, and on their faces. It
seems as if it were this saturation which makes them stand cold and
rain so well. If they were to go into a warm climate, they would all
die of the scurvy.
The vessel was no better than the crew. Everything was in the oldest
and most inconvenient fashion possible; running trusses on the yards,
and large hawser cables, coiled all over the decks, and served and
parcelled in all directions. The topmasts, top-gallant masts and
studding-sail booms were nearly black for want of scraping, and the
decks would have turned the stomach of a man-of-war's-man. The galley
was down in the forecastle; and there the crew lived, in the midst of
the steam and grease of the cooking, in a place as hot as an oven, and
as dirty as a pigsty. Five minutes in the forecastle was enough for
us, and we were glad to get into the open air. We made some trade with
them, buying Indian curiosities, of which they had a great number; such
as bead-work, feathers of birds, fur moccasins, etc. I purchased a
large robe, made of the skins of some animals, dried and sewed nicely
together, and covered all over on the outside with thick downy
feathers, taken from the breasts of various birds, and arranged with
their different colors, so as to make a brilliant show.
A few days after our arrival, the rainy season set in, and, for three
weeks, it rained almost every hour, without cessation. This was bad for
our trade, for the collecting of hides is managed differently in this
port from what it is in any other on the coast. The mission of San
Francisco near the anchorage, has no trade at all, but those of San
José, Santa Clara, and others, situated on large creeks or rivers which
run into the bay, and distant between fifteen and forty miles from the
anchorage, do a greater business in hides than any in California.
Large boats, manned by Indians, and capable of carrying nearly a
thousand hides apiece, are attached to the missions, and sent down to
the vessels with hides, to bring away goods in return. Some of the
crews of the vessels are obliged to go and come in the boats, to look
out for the hides and goods. These are favorite expeditions with the
sailors, in fine weather; but now to be gone three or four days, in
open boats, in constant rain, without any shelter, and with cold food,
was hard service. Two of our men went up to Santa Clara in one of these
boats, and were gone three days, during all which time they had a
constant rain, and did not sleep a wink, but passed three long nights,
walking fore and aft the boat, in the open air. When they got on
board, they were completely exhausted, and took a watch below of twelve
hours. All the hides, too, that came down in the boats, were soaked
with water, and unfit to put below, so that we were obliged to trice
them up to dry, in the intervals of sunshine or wind, upon all parts of
the vessel. We got up tricing-lines from the jib-boom-end to each arm
of the fore yard, and thence to the main and cross-jack yard-arms.
Between the tops, too, and the mast-heads, from the fore to the main
swifters, and thence to the mizen rigging, and in all directions
athwartships, tricing-lines were run, and strung with hides. The head
stays and guys, and the spritsail-yard, were lined, and, having still
more, we got out the swinging booms, and strung them and the forward
and after guys, with hides. The rail, fore and aft, the windlass,
capstan, the sides of the ship, and every vacant place on deck, were
covered with wet hides, on the least sign of an interval for drying.
Our ship was nothing but a mass of hides, from the cat-harpins to the
water's edge, and from the jib-boom-end to the taffrail.
One cold, rainy evening, about eight o'clock, I received orders to get
ready to start for San José at four the next morning, in one of these
Indian boats, with four days' provisions. I got my oil-cloth clothes,
south-wester, and thick boots all ready, and turned into my hammock
early, determined to get some sleep in advance, as the boat was to be
alongside before daybreak. I slept on till all hands were called in
the morning; for, fortunately for me, the Indians, intentionally, or
from mistaking their orders, had gone off alone in the night, and were
far out of sight. Thus I escaped three or four days of very
uncomfortable service.
Four of our men, a few days afterwards, went up in one of the
quarter-boats to Santa Clara, to carry the agent, and remained out all
night in a drenching rain, in the small boat, where there was not room
for them to turn round; the agent having gone up to the mission and
left the men to their fate, making no provision for their
accommodation, and not even sending them anything to eat. After this,
they had to pull thirty miles, and when they got on board, were so
stiff that they could not come up the gangway ladder. This filled up
the measure of the agent's unpopularity, and never after this could he
get anything done by any of the crew; and many a delay and vexation,
and many a good ducking in the surf, did he get to pay up old scores,
or "square the yards with the bloody quill-driver."
Having collected nearly all the hides that were to be procured, we
began our preparations for taking in a supply of wood and water, for
both of which, San Francisco is the best place on the coast. A small
island, situated about two leagues from the anchorage, called by us
"Wood Island," and by the Spaniards "Isle de los Angelos," was covered
with trees to the water's edge; and to this, two of our crew, who were
Kennebec men, and could handle an axe like a plaything, were sent every
morning to cut wood, with two boys to pile it up for them. In about a
week, they had cut enough to last us a year, and the third mate, with
myself and three others, were sent over in a large, schooner-rigged,
open launch, which we had hired of the mission, to take in the wood,
and bring it to the ship. We left the ship about noon, but, owing to a
strong head wind, and a tide, which here runs four or five knots, did
not get into the harbor, formed by two points of the island, where the
boats lie, until sundown. No sooner had we come-to, than a strong
south-easter, which had been threatening us all day, set in, with heavy
rain and a chilly atmosphere. We were in rather a bad situation: an
open boat, a heavy rain, and a long night; for in winter, in this
latitude, it was dark nearly fifteen hours. Taking a small skiff which
we had brought with us, we went ashore, but found no shelter, for
everything was open to the rain, and collecting a little wood, which we
found by lifting up the leaves and brush, and a few mussels, we put
aboard again, and made the best preparations in our power for passing
the night. We unbent the mainsail, and formed an awning with it over
the after part of the boat, made a bed of wet logs of wood, and, with
our jackets on, lay down, about six o'clock, to sleep. Finding the rain
running down upon us, and our jackets getting wet through, and the
rough, knotty-logs, rather indifferent couches, we turned out; and
taking an iron pan which we brought with us, we wiped it out dry, put
some stones around it, cut the wet bark from some sticks, and striking
a light, made a small fire in the pan. Keeping some sticks near, to
dry, and covering the whole over with a roof of boards, we kept up a
small fire, by which we cooked our mussels, and ate them, rather for an
occupation than from hunger. Still, it was not ten o'clock, and the
night was long before us, when one of the party produced an old pack of
Spanish cards from his monkey-jacket pocket, which we hailed as a great
windfall; and keeping a dim, flickering light by our fagots, we played
game after game, till one or two o'clock, when, becoming really tired,
we went to our logs again, one sitting up at a time, in turn, to keep
watch over the fire. Toward morning, the rain ceased, and the air
became sensibly colder, so that we found sleep impossible, and sat up,
watching for daybreak. No sooner was it light than we went ashore, and
began our preparations for loading our vessel. We were not mistaken in
the coldness of the weather, for a white frost was on the ground, a
thing we had never seen before in California, and one or two little
puddles of fresh water were skimmed over with a thin coat of ice. In
this state of the weather and before sunrise, in the grey of the
morning, we had to wade off, nearly up to our hips in water, to load
the skiff with the wood by armsfull. The third mate remained on board
the launch, two more men staid in the skiff, to load and manage it, and
all the water-work, as usual, fell upon the two youngest of us; and
there we were, with frost on the ground, wading forward and back, from
the beach to the boat, with armsfull of wood, barefooted, and our
trowsers rolled up. When the skiff went off with her load, we could
only keep our feet from freezing by racing up and down the beach on the
hard sand, as fast as we could go. We were all day at this work, and
towards sundown, having loaded the vessel as deep as she would bear, we
hove up our anchor, and made sail, beating out the bay. No sooner had
we got into the large bay, than we found a strong tide setting us out
to seaward, a thick fog which prevented our seeing the ship, and a
breeze too light to set us against the tide; for we were as deep as a
sand-barge. By the utmost exertions, we saved ourselves from being
carried out to sea, and were glad to reach the leewardmost point of the
island, where we came-to, and prepared to pass another night, more
uncomfortable than the first, for we were loaded up to the gunwale, and
had only a choice among logs and sticks for a resting-place. The next
morning, we made sail at slack water, with a fair wind, and got on
board by eleven o'clock, when all hands were turned-to, to unload and
stow away the wood, which took till night.
Having now taken in all our wood, the next morning a water-party was