Saturday, July 11th. The Pilgrim set sail for the windward, and left
us to go on in our old way. Having laid in such a supply of wood,
and the days being now long, and invariably pleasant, we had a good
deal of time to ourselves. All the duck I received from home, I soon
made up into trowsers and frocks, and displayed, every Sunday, a
complete suit of my own make, from head to foot, having formed the
remnants of the duck into a cap. Reading, mending, sleeping, with
occasional excursions into the bush, with the dogs, in search of
coati, hares, and rabbits, or to encounter a rattlesnake, and now
and then a visit to the Presidio, filled up our spare time after
hide-curing was over for the day. Another amusement, which we
sometimes indulged in, was "burning the water" for craw-fish. For this
purpose, we procured a pair of grains, with a long staff like a
harpoon, and making torches with tarred rope twisted round a long pine
stick, took the only boat on the beach, a small skiff, and with a
torch-bearer in the bow, a steersman in the stern, and one man on each
side with the grains, went off, on dark nights, to burn the water.
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