ranged in piles on the overhanging summit.  The captain sent me, who was the only one of the crew that had ever been there before, to the top to count the hides and pitch them down.  There I stood again, as six months before, throwing off the hides, and watching them, pitching and scaling, to the bottom, while the men, dwarfed by the distance, were walking to and fro on the beach, carrying the hides, as they picked them up, to the distant boats, upon the tops of their heads.  Two or three boat-loads were sent off, until at last all were thrown down, and the boats nearly loaded again, when we were delayed by a dozen or twenty hides which had lodged in the recesses of the bank, and which we could not reach by any missiles, as the general line of the side was exactly perpendicular, and these places were caved in, and could not be seen or reached from the top.  As hides are worth in Boston twelve and a half cents a pound, and the captain’s commission was one per cent, he determined not to give them up, and sent on board for a pair of top-gallant studding-sail halyards, and requested some one of the crew to go to the top and come down by the halyards.  The older sailors said the boys, who were light and active, ought to go; while the boys thought that strength and experience were necessary.  Seeing the dilemma, and feeling myself to be near the medium of these requisites, I offered my services, and went up, with one man to tend the rope, and prepared for the descent.

We found a stake fastened strongly into the ground, and apparently capable of holding my weight, to which we made one end of the halyard well fast, and, taking the coil, threw it over the brink.  The end, we saw, just reached to a landing-place, from which the descent to the beach was easy.  Having nothing on but shirt, trousers, and hat, the common sea rig of warm weather, I had no stripping to do, and began my descent by taking hold of the rope with both hands, and slipping down, sometimes with hands and feet round the rope, and sometimes breasting off with one hand and foot against the precipice, and holding on to the rope with the other.  In this way I descended until I came to a place which shelved in, and in which the hides were lodged.  Keeping hold of the rope with one hand, I scrambled in, and by aid of my feet and the other hand succeeded in dislodging all the hides, and continued on my way.  Just below this place, the precipice projected again, and, going over the projection, I could see nothing below me but the sea and the rocks upon which it broke, and a few gulls flying in mid-air.  I got down in safety, pretty well covered with dirt; and for my pains was told, ``What a d—–­d fool you were to risk your life for half a dozen hides!’’