The next day we pulled the agent ashore, and he went up to visit the Pueblo and the neighboring missions; and in a few days, as the result of his labors, large ox-carts, and droves of mules, loaded with hides, were seen coming over the flat country.  We loaded our long-boat with goods of all kinds, light and heavy, and pulled ashore.  After landing and rolling them over the stones upon the beach, we stopped, waiting for the carts to come down the hill and take them; but the captain soon settled the matter by ordering us to carry them all up to the top, saying that that was ``California fashion.’’ So, what the oxen would not do, we were obliged to do.  The hill was low, but steep, and the earth, being clayey and wet with the recent rains, was but bad holding ground for our feet.  The heavy barrels and casks we rolled up with some difficulty, getting behind and putting our shoulders to them; now and then our feet, slipping, added to the danger of the casks rolling back upon us.  But the greatest trouble was with the large boxes of sugar.  These we had to place upon oars, and, lifting them up, rest the oars upon our shoulders, and creep slowly up the hill with the gait of a funeral procession.  After an hour or two of hard work, we got them all up, and found the carts standing full of hides, which we had to unload, and to load the carts again with our own goods; the lazy Indians, who came down with them, squatting on their hams, looking on, doing nothing, and when we asked them to help us, only shaking their heads, or drawling out ``no quiero.’’

Having loaded the carts, we started up the Indians, who went off, one on each side of the oxen, with long sticks, sharpened at the end, to punch them with.  This is one of the means of saving labor in California,—­ two Indians to two oxen.  Now, the hides were to be got down; and for this purpose we brought the boat round to a place where the hill was steeper, and threw them off, letting them slide over the slope.  Many of them lodged, and we had to let ourselves down and set them a-going again, and in this way became covered with dust, and our clothes torn.  After we had the hides all down, we were obliged to take them on our heads, and walk over the stones, and through the water, to the boat.  The water and the stones together would wear out a pair of shoes a day, and as shoes were very scarce and very dear, we were compelled to go barefooted.  At night we went on board, having had the hardest and most disagreeable day’s work that we had yet experienced.  For several days we were employed in this manner, until we had landed forty or fifty tons of goods, and brought on board about two thousand hides, when the trade began to slacken, and we were kept at work on board during the latter part of the week, either in the hold or upon the rigging.  On Thursday night there was a violent blow from the northward; but as this was off-shore, we had only to let go our other anchor and hold on.  We were called up at night to send down the royal-yards.  It was as dark as a pocket, and the vessel pitching at her anchors.  I went up to the fore, and Stimson to the main, and we soon had them down ``ship-shape and Bristol fashion’’; for, as we had now become used to our duty aloft, everything above the cross-trees was left to us, who were the youngest of the crew, except one boy.