Page:Narrative of a Voyage around the World - 1843.djvu/151

1837.] every department (more than an arsenal generally boasts) attest very superior ability.

The saw-mills, which are worked by water, are about twenty miles distant, half way down the south side of the sound, at Les Sources, or warm springs, which serves as a sort of Harrowgate to the colony.

Their most valuable wood is a very fine-grained bright-yellow cypress, of which they build boats, and export the plank in payment of debts contracted for supplies from the Sandwich Islands, (principally China and other goods.) They have a building slip, protected by a house, similar to those in our dock-yards, and have, I am informed, built one very fine vessel.

The establishment comprises that of a ship of the line, one captain, the governor; one commander, (lieutenant-governor;) and lieutenants, masters, &c., according to the number of vessels employed. The total number is about eight hundred, but of these many, if not the greater part, are invalids; but few able-bodied men were visible. Many, of course their picked men, were absent in their vessels, visiting the ports and collecting the furs, which were daily expected to arrive,—when the vessels are laid up, and they remain quiet until the spring.

I visited every part of the establishment with the Governor, and although a man-of-war's man's ideas of cleanliness are perhaps occasionally acute, (and these people are yet a shade lower in civilization by their intermarriage with the natives,) yet I Rh