dark hole in which we lived, and many and various reflections and purposes coursed through my mind.  I had no apprehension that the captain would try to lay a hand on me; but our situation, living under a tyranny, with an ungoverned, swaggering fellow administering it; of the character of the country we were in; the length of the voyage; the uncertainty attending our return to America; and then, if we should return, the prospect of obtaining justice and satisfaction for these poor men; and I vowed that, if God should ever give me the means, I would do something to redress the grievances and relieve the sufferings of that class of beings with whom my lot had so long been cast.

The next day was Sunday.  We worked, as usual, washing decks, &c., until breakfast-time.  After breakfast we pulled the captain ashore, and, finding some hides there which had been brought down the night before, he ordered me to stay ashore and watch them, saying that the boat would come again before night.  They left me, and I spent a quiet day on the hill, eating dinner with the three men at the little house.  Unfortunately they had no books; and, after talking with them, and walking about, I began to grow tired of doing nothing.  The little brig, the home of so much hardship and suffering, lay in the offing, almost as far as one could see; and the only other thing which broke the surface of the great bay was a small, dreary-looking island, steep and conical, of a clayey soil, and without the sign of vegetable life upon it, yet which had a peculiar and melancholy interest, for on the top of it were buried the remains of an Englishman, the commander of a small merchant brig, who died while lying in this port.  It was always a solemn and affecting spot to me.  There it stood, desolate, and in the midst of desolation; and there were the remains of one who died and was buried alone and friendless.  Had it been a common burying-place, it would have been nothing.  The single body corresponded well with the solitary character of everything around.  It was the only spot in California that impressed me with anything like poetic interest.  Then, too, the man died far from home, without a friend near him,—­ by poison, it was suspected, and no one to inquire into it,—­ and without proper funeral rites; the mate (as I was told), glad to have him out of the way, hurrying him up the hill and into the ground, without a word or a prayer.

I looked anxiously for a boat, during the latter part of the afternoon, but none came; until toward sundown, when I saw a speck on the water, and as it drew near I found it was the gig, with the captain.  The hides, then, were not to go off.  The captain came up the hill, with a man, bringing my monkey jacket and a blanket.  He looked pretty black, but inquired whether I had enough to eat; told me to make a house out of the hides, and keep myself warm, as I should have to sleep there among them, and to keep good watch over them.  I got a moment to speak to the man who brought my jacket.