main, furling the topsails, while eight or ten were hanging about the forecastle, doing nothing.  This was a strange sight for a vessel coming to anchor; so we went up to them, to see what was the matter.  One of them, a stout, hearty-looking fellow, held out his leg and said he had the scurvy; another had cut his hand; and others had got nearly well, but said that there were plenty aloft to furl the sails, so they were sogering on the forecastle.  There was only one ``splicer’’ on board, a fine-looking old tar, who was in the bunt of the fore topsail.  He was probably the only thorough marline-spike seaman in the ship, before the mast.  The mates, of course, and the boat-steerers, and also two or three of the crew, had been to sea before, but only on whaling voyages; and the greater part of the crew were raw hands, just from the bush, and had not yet got the hay-seed out of their hair.  The mizzen topsail hung in the buntlines until everything was furled forward.  Thus a crew of thirty men were half an hour in doing what would have been done in the Alert, with eighteen hands to go aloft, in fifteen or twenty minutes.[1]

We found they had been at sea six or eight months, and had no news to tell us, so we left them, and promised to get liberty to come on board in the evening for some curiosities.  Accordingly, as soon as we were knocked off in the evening and were through supper, we obtained leave, took a boat, and went aboard and spent an hour or two.  They gave us pieces of whalebone, and the teeth and other parts of curious sea animals, and we exchanged books with them,—­ a practice very common among ships in foreign ports, by which you get rid of the books you have read and re-read, and a supply of new ones in their stead, and Jack is not very nice as to their comparative value.[2]

Thursday, November 12th.  This day was quite cool in the early part, and there were black clouds about; but as it was often so in the morning, nothing was apprehended, and all the captains went ashore together to spend the day.  Towards noon the clouds hung heavily over the mountains, coming half-way down the hills that encircle the town of Santa Barbara, and a heavy swell rolled in from the southeast.  The mate immediately ordered the gig’s crew away, and, at the same time, we saw boats pulling ashore from the other vessels.  Here was a grand chance for a rowing-match, and every one did his best.  We passed the boats of the Ayacucho and Loriotte, but could not hold our own with the long six-oared boat of the whale-ship.  They reached the breakers before us; but here we had the advantage of them, for, not being used to the surf, they were obliged to wait to see us beach our boat, just as, in the same place, nearly a year before, we, in the Pilgrim, were glad to be taught by a boat’s crew of Kanakas.