man recollected a book he had left in the galley.  He went after it, and it proved to be Woodstock.  This was a great windfall, and as all could not read it at once, I, being the scholar of the company, was appointed reader.  I got a knot of six or eight about me, and no one could have had a more attentive audience.  Some laughed at the ``scholars,’’ and went over the other side of the forecastle to work and spin their yarns; but I carried the day, and had the cream of the crew for my hearers.  Many of the reflections, and the political parts, I omitted, but all the narrative they were delighted with; especially the descriptions of the Puritans, and the sermons and harangues of the Round-head soldiers.  The gallantry of Charles, Dr. Radcliffe’s plots, the knavery of ``trusty Tompkins,’’—­ in fact, every part seemed to chain their attention.  Many things which, while I was reading, I had a misgiving about, thinking them above their tastes, I was surprised to find them enter into completely.

I read nearly all day, until sundown; when, as soon as supper was over, as I had nearly finished, they got a light from the galley; and, by skipping what was less interesting, I carried them through to the marriage of Everard, and the restoration of Charles the Second, before eight o’clock.

The next morning, we took the battens from the hatches, and opened the ship.  A few stifled rats were found; and what bugs, cockroaches, fleas, and other vermin there might have been on board must have unrove their life-lines before the hatches were opened.  The ship being now ready, we covered the bottom of the hold over, fore and aft, with dried brush for dunnage, and, having levelled everything away, we were ready to take in our cargo.  All the hides that had been collected since the California left the coast (a little more than two years), amounting to about forty thousand, had been cured, dried, and stowed away in the house, waiting for our good ship to take them to Boston.

Now began the operation of taking in our cargo, which kept us hard at work, from the gray of the morning till starlight, for six weeks, with the exception of Sundays, and of just time to swallow our meals.  To carry the work on quicker, a division of labor was made.  Two men threw the hides down from the piles in the house, two more picked them up and put them on a long horizontal pole, raised a few feet from the ground, where they were beaten by two more with flails, somewhat like those used in threshing wheat.  When beaten, they were taken from this pole by two more, and placed upon a platform of boards; and ten or a dozen men, with their trousers rolled up, and hides upon their heads, were constantly going back and forth from the platform to the boat, which was kept off where she would just float.  The throwing the hides upon the pole was the most difficult work, and required a sleight of hand which was only to be got by long practice.  As I was known for a hide-curer,