send the bark to San Francisco that fall, they promptly refused to go, declaring that the vessel was unseaworthy, and that they preferred to spend the winter in Siberia rather than risk a voyage in her to America.  Major Abaza immediately called a commission of the officers of the Saghalin, and requested them to make another examination of the bark and give him their opinion in writing as to her seaworthiness.  The examination was made, and the opinion given that she was entirely fit for a voyage to Petropavlovsk, Kamchatka, and probably to San Francisco.  This decision was read to the negroes, but they still persisted in their refusal.  After warning them of the consequences of mutiny, the Major ordered their ringleader to be put in irons, and he was conveyed on board the Saghalin and imprisoned in the “black hole”; but his comrades still held out.  It was of vital importance that the Palmetto should go to sea with the first high tide, because the season was already far advanced, and she must inevitably be wrecked by ice if she remained in the river later than the middle of October.

Besides this, Major Abaza would be compelled to leave for Yakutsk on the steamer Saghalin, and the latter was now ready to go to sea.  On the afternoon of the 1st, just as the Saghalin was getting up steam to start, the negroes sent word to the Major that if he would release the man whom he had caused to be put in irons, they would do their best to finish unloading the Palmetto and to get her back to San Francisco.  The man was promptly released, and two hours afterwards Major Abaza sailed on the Saghalin for Okhotsk, leaving us to do the best we could with our half-wrecked stranded ship and her mutinous crew.

The cargo of the bark was still only half discharged, and we continued for the next five days to unload in boats, but it was hard, discouraging work, as there were only six hours in the twenty-four during which boats could reach the ship, and those six hours were from eleven o’clock P.M. to five in the morning.  At all other times the ship lay on her beam-ends, and the water around her was too shallow to float even a plank.  To add, if possible, to our difficulties and to our anxiety, the weather became suddenly colder, the thermometer fell to zero, masses of floating ice came in with every tide and tore off great sheets of the vessel’s copper as they drifted past, and the river soon became so choked up with icy fragments that we were obliged to haul the boats back and forth with ropes.  In spite of weather, water, and ice, however, the vessel’s cargo was slowly but steadily discharged, and by the 10th of October nothing remained on board except a few hogsheads of flour, some salt-beef and pork which we did not want, and seventy-five or a hundred tons of coal.  These we determined to let her carry back to San Francisco as ballast.  The tides were now getting successively higher and higher every day, and on the 11th the Palmetto