Page:California Historical Society Quarterly vol 22.djvu/248

 dinner is invariably the same, so that if I am bothered to know the day of the week I have only to say to myself we had boiled rice yesterday, and duff to day for dinner, so it must be Thursday. If you call this hardship or hard fare then I am no judge. The Capt. and myself are great friends, he is about forty years of age, a man of family, a strict temperance man, an odd fellow and a gentleman and I should also add a Christian, so you see I am in good company. All our officers are gentlemen and pleasant companions. We have about 90 men in all on board, and of this number of course some few are bad, but the majority are fine men, and pleasant times we have these bright moonlight evenings; we have 4 or 5 musicians among us besides some good singers, so we have dancing balls and concerts, and on Sunday which is always strictly observed, the day being passed in reading, towards night we gather on the quarter deck, get out the Psalm Books, and the way we do sing Old Hundred, Windham, Antioch, and all the other good old tunes is a caution; sometimes we will take the Bible and read aloud for the rest. We have lots of Bibles aboard, a package being given us by the New York Bible Society before we sailed. On week days I pass the time in drawing. Painting, studying, reading, etc., I am a great favorite with all hands. They fish up sea weed for me upon which we find all sorts of queer shells and little animals and I make paintings of them, so you see I am improving my time and shall have lots of things to show you when I come back, besides plenty of long yarns, for I keep a journal of everything aboard. We have seen Whales and Grampus's, Sharks, and Porpoises, Water Spouts and all sorts of wonders to be seen at sea. I am well satisfied that although this may be somewhat the longest route to California, it is the most certain, safe, and pleasant one, the least hardship to be endured. In fact, no hardship at all have we seen yet, and one third of our voyage is accomplished.

Yours affectionately, W.

j3g^j, S At Sea, June i st, 1 849

I expect you will hear of us or our vessel before you get any letter, for there are at this moment 5 sails in sight, one is coming directly toward us, has hoisted the American flag and made signal to speak us, so I must go on deck and see them and hear what they have to say. It is unusual to see so many sails at one time at sea, but as we are near the harbor of Rio they have prob- ably all sailed from there, some homeward bound, some for Europe. We have been as long as three weeks without seeing a sail, or anything except the sea around us, and now and then some Whales and Porpoises, but there are so many of us that we form a little world or community by ourselves.

3 O'clock. We have just spoken a vessel bound to N. Y. so they will report us and I suppose you will hear of it; they came very close to us and as the wind was light we had quite a confab. The way vessels speak each other may