After dinner the crew began discharging their hides, and, as we had nothing to do at the hide-houses, we were ordered aboard to help them.  I had now my first opportunity of seeing the ship which I hoped was to be my home for the next year.  She looked as well on board as she did from without.  Her decks were wide and roomy (there being no poop, or house on deck, which disfigures the after part of most of our vessels), flush fore and aft, and as white as flax, which the crew told us was from constant use of holystones.  There was no foolish gilding and gingerbread work, to take the eye of landsmen and passengers, but everything was ``ship-shape.’’ There was no rust, no dirt, no rigging hanging slack, no fag-ends of ropes and ``Irish pendants’’ aloft, and the yards were squared ``to a t’’ by lifts and braces.  The mate was a hearty fellow, with a roaring voice, and always wide awake.  He was ``a man, every inch of him,’’ as the sailors said; and though ``a bit of a horse,’’ and ``a hard customer,’’ yet he was generally liked by the crew.  There was also a second and third mate, a carpenter, sailmaker, steward, and cook, and twelve hands before the mast.  She had on board seven thousand hides, which she had collected at the windward, and also horns and tallow.  All these we began discharging from both gangways at once into the two boats, the second mate having charge of the launch, and the third mate of the pinnace.  For several days we were employed in this way, until all the hides were taken out, when the crew began taking in ballast, and we returned to our old work, hide-curing.

Saturday, August 29th.  Arrived, brig Catalina, from the windward.

Sunday, August 30th.  This was the first Sunday that the Alert’s crew had been in San Diego, and of course they were all for going up to see the town.  The Indians came down early, with horses to let for the day, and those of the crew who could obtain liberty went off to the Presidio and Mission, and did not return until night.  I had seen enough of San Diego, and went on board and spent the day with some of the crew, whom I found quietly at work in the forecastle, either mending and washing their clothes, or reading and writing.  They told me that the ship stopped at Callao on the passage out, and lay there three weeks.  She had a passage of a little over eighty days from Boston to Callao, which is one of the shortest on record.  There they left the Brandywine frigate, and some smaller American ships of war, and the English frigate Blonde, and a French seventy-four.  From Callao they came directly to California, and had visited every port on the coast, including San Francisco.  The forecastle in which they lived was large, tolerably well lighted by bull’s-eyes, and, being kept perfectly clean, had quite a comfortable appearance; at least, it was far better than the little, black, dirty hole in which I had lived so many months on board the Pilgrim.  By the regulations of the ship, the forecastle was cleaned out every morning;