``That walked upon the beach
     Appeared like mice; and our tall anchoring bark
     Diminished to her cock; her cock a buoy
     Almost too small for sight.’’

Down this height we pitched the hides, throwing them as far out into the air as we could; and as they were all large, stiff, and doubled, like the cover of a book, the wind took them, and they swayed and eddied about, plunging and rising in the air, like a kite when it has broken its string.  As it was now low tide, there was no danger of their falling into the water; and, as fast as they came to ground, the men below picked them up, and, taking them on their heads, walked off with them to the boat.  It was really a picturesque sight:  the great height, the scaling of the hides, and the continual walking to and fro of the men, who looked like mites, on the beach.  This was the romance of hide droghing!

Some of the hides lodged in cavities under the bank and out of our sight, being directly under us; but by pitching other hides in the same direction, we succeeded in dislodging them.  Had they remained there, the captain said he should have sent on board for a couple of pairs of long halyards, and got some one to go down for them.  It was said that one of the crew of an English brig went down in the same way, a few years before.  We looked over, and thought it would not be a welcome task, especially for a few paltry hides; but no one knows what he will do until he is called upon; for, six months afterwards, I descended the same place by a pair of top-gallant studding-sail halyards, to save half a dozen hides which had lodged there.

Having thrown them all over, we took our way back again, and found the boat loaded and ready to start.  We pulled off, took the hides all aboard, hoisted in the boats, hove up our anchor, made sail, and before sundown were on our way to San Diego.

Friday, May 8th, 1835.  Arrived at San Diego.  We found the little harbor deserted.  The Lagoda, Ayacucho, Loriotte, all had sailed from the coast, and we were left alone.  All the hide-houses on the beach but ours were shut up, and the Sandwich-Islanders, a dozen or twenty in number, who had worked for the other vessels, and been paid off when they sailed, were living on the beach, keeping up a grand carnival.  There was a large oven on the beach, which, it seems, had been built by a Russian discovery-ship, that had been on the coast a few years ago, for baking her bread.  This the Sandwich-Islanders took possession of, and had kept ever since, undisturbed.  It was big enough to hold eight or ten men, and had a door at the side, and a vent-hole at top.  They covered the floor with Oahu mats for a carpet, stopped up the vent-hole in bad weather, and made it their head-quarters.  It was now inhabited by as many as a dozen or twenty men, crowded together, who lived there in complete idleness,—­ drinking, playing cards, and carousing in every way.  They bought a bullock