lighthouse, and then grounded heavily in about seven feet of water.  As soon as she struck she began pounding with tremendous violence against the bottom while the seas broke in great white clouds of spray entirely over her quarter-deck.  It did not seem probable, that she would live through the night.  As the tide rose, however, she drove farther and farther in toward the mouth of the river until, at full flood, she was only a quarter of a mile distant.  Being a very strongly built ship, she suffered less damage than we had supposed, and, as the tide ran out, she lay high and dry on the bar, with no more serious injury than the loss of her false keel and a few sections of her copper sheathing.

As she was lying on her beam-ends, with her deck careened at an angle of forty-five degrees, it was impossible to hoist anything out of her hold, but we made preparations at once to discharge her cargo in boats as soon as another tide should raise her into an upright position.  We felt little hope of being able to save the ship, but it was all-important that her cargo should be discharged before she should go to pieces.  Captain Tobezin, of the Russian steamer Saghalin, offered us the use of all his boats and the assistance of his crew, and on the following day we began work with six or seven boats, a large lighter, and about fifty men.  The sea still continued to run very high; the bark recommenced her pounding against the bottom; the lighter swamped and sank with a full load about a hundred yards from shore, and a miscellaneous assortment of boxes, crates, and flour-barrels went swimming up the river with the tide.  Notwithstanding all these misfortunes, we kept perseveringly at work with the boats as long as there was water enough around the bark to float them, and by the time the tide ran out we could congratulate ourselves upon having saved provisions enough to insure us against starvation, even though the ship should go to pieces that night.  On the 25th, the wind abated somewhat in violence, the sea went down, and as the bark did not seem to be seriously injured we began to entertain some hope of saving both ship and cargo.  From the 25th until the 29th of September, all the boats of the Saghalin and of the Palmetto, with the crews of both vessels, were constantly engaged in transporting stores from the bark to the shore, and on the 30th at least half of the Palmetto’s cargo was safely discharged.  So far as we could judge, there would be nothing to prevent her from going to sea with the first high tide in October.  A careful examination proved that she had sustained no greater injury than the loss of her false keel, and this, in the opinion of the Saghalin’s officers, would not make her any the less seaworthy, or interfere to any extent with her sailing.  A new difficulty, however, presented itself.  The crew of the Palmetto were all negroes; and as soon as they learned that Major Abaza intended to