Our liberty had now truly
taken flight, and with it we laid away our pumps, stockings, blue
jackets, neckerchiefs, and other go-ashore paraphernalia, and
putting on old duck trowsers, red shirts, and Scotch caps, began
taking out and landing our hides. For three days we were hard at work,
from the grey of the morning until starlight, with the exception of
a short time allowed for meals, in this duty. For landing and taking
on board hides, San Diego is decidedly the best place in California.
The harbor is small and land-locked; there is no surf; the vessels lie
within a cable's length of the beach; and the beach itself is
smooth, hard sand, without rocks or stones. For these reasons, it is
used by all the vessels in the trade, as a depot; and, indeed, it
would be impossible, when loading with the cured hides for the passage
home, to take them on board at any of the open ports, without
getting them wet in the surf, which would spoil them. We took
possession of one of the hide-houses, which belonged to our firm,
and had been used by the California. It was built to hold forty
thousand hides, and we had the pleasing prospect of filling it
before we could leave the coast; and toward this, our thirty-five
hundred, which we brought down with us, would do but little.
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