 Epilogue, Part 1 of Two Years Before the Mast by Richard Henry Deena, Jr. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Two years before the mast. Epilogue, 24 years after. It was in the winter of 1835 to 36 that the ship alert, in the prosecution of her voyage for hides on the remote and almost unknown coast of California, floated into the vast solitude of the bay of San Francisco. All around was the stillness of nature. One vessel, a Russian, lay at anchor there, but during our whole stay not a sail came or went. Our trade was with remote missions, which sent hides to us in launches man by the Indians. Our anchorage was between a small island called Yerba Buena and a gravel beach in a little bite or cove of the same name, formed by two small projecting points. Beyond to the westward of the landing place were dreary sandhills with little grass to be seen and few trees, and beyond them higher hills, steep and barren, their sides gullied by the rains. Some five or six miles beyond the landing place to the right was a ruinous presidio, and some three or four miles to the left was the mission of Dolores, as ruinous as the presidio, almost deserted, with but few Indians attached to it, and but little property and cattle. Over a region far beyond our site there were no other human habitations, except that an enterprising Yankee years in advance of his time had put up, on the rising ground above the landing, the shanty of rough boards, where he carried on a very small retail trade between the hide-chips and the Indians. Vast banks of fog invading us from the North Pacific drove in through the entrance and covered the whole bay, and when they disappeared we saw a few well-wooded islands, the sandhills on the west, the grassy and wooded slopes on the east, and the vast stretch of the bay to the southern, where we were told lay the missions of Santa Clara and San Jose, and still longer stretches to the northward and northeastward, where we understood smaller bays spread out, and large rivers poured in their tributes of water. There were no settlements in these bays or rivers, and the few ranchos and missions were remote and widely separated. Not only the neighborhood of our anchorage, but the entire region of the Great Bay was a solitude. On the whole coast of California there was not a lighthouse, a beacon, or a buoy, and the charts were made up from old and disconnected surveys by British, Russian, and Mexican voyagers. Birds of prey and passage swooped and dived about us, wild beasts ranged through the oak groves, and as we slowly floated out of the harbor with a tide, herds of deer came to the waters edge on the northerly side of the entrance to gaze at the strange spectacle. On the evening of Saturday the 13th of August, 1859, the superb steamship Golden Gate, gay with crowds of passengers and lighting the sea from miles around with a glare of her signal lights of red, green, and white, and brilliant with lighted saloons and staterooms, bound up from the isthmus of Panama, near the entrance of San Francisco, the great center of a worldwide commerce. Miles out at sea on the desolate rocks of the Faralones gleamed the powerful rays of one of the most costly and effective lighthouses in the world. As we drew in through the Golden Gate, another lighthouse met our eyes, and in the clear moonlight of the unbroken Californian summer we saw, on the right, a large fortification protecting the narrow entrance. And just before us, the little island of Alcatraz confronted us, one entire fortress. We bore round the point towards the old anchoring ground of the hide-ships, and there, covering the sandhills and the valleys, stretching from the water's edge to the base of the great hills, and from the old prosidio to the mission, flickering all over with the lamps of its streets and houses, lay a city of one hundred thousand inhabitants. Clocks told the hour of midnight from its steeples, but the city was alive from the salute of our guns, spreading the news that the fortnightly steamer had come, bringing males and passengers from the Atlantic world. Clipperships of the largest size lay at anchor in the stream, or were girt at the wharves, and capacious high-pressure steamers as large and showy as those of the Hudson or Mississippi. Bodies of dazzling light awaited the delivery of our males to take their cruises up the bay, stopping at Benicia and the United States Naval Station, and then up the great tributaries, the Sacramento, San Joaquin, and Feather Rivers, to the far inland cities of Sacramento, Stockton, and Marysville. The dock into which we drew in the streets about it were densely crowded with express wagons and hand carts to take luggage, coaches and cabs to take passengers, and with men, some looking out for friends among our hundreds of passengers, agents of the press, and a greater multitude eager for newspapers and verbal intelligence from the great Atlantic and European world. Through this crowd I made my way along the well-built and well-lighted streets as alive by day, where boys in high-keyed voices were already crying the latest New York papers, and between one or two o'clock in the morning found myself comfortably a bed in a commodious room in the Oriental Hotel, which stood, as well as I could learn, on the filled-up cove, and not far from the spot where we used to beach our boats from the alert. Sunday, August 14th. When I awoke in the morning and looked for my windows over the city of San Francisco, with its storehouses, towers and steeples, its courthouses, theaters and hospitals, its daily journals, its well-filled learned professions, its fortresses and lighthouses, its wharves and harbors, with their thousand-ton clipper ships more in number than London or Liverpool sheltered that day, itself one of the capitals of the American Republic and the sole emporium of a new world, the awakened Pacific. When I looked across the bay to the eastward and beheld a beautiful town on the fertile wooded shores of the Contra Costa and steamers, large and small, the ferry boats to the Contra Costa and capacious freighters and passenger carriers to all parts of the Great Bay and its tributaries with lines of their smoke in the horizon, when I saw all these things and reflected on what I once was and saw here and what now surrounded me, I could scarcely keep my hold on reality at all or the genuineness of anything and seemed to myself like one who had moved in worlds not realized. I could not complain that I had not a choice of places to worship. The Roman Catholics have an archbishop, a cathedral and five or six smaller churches, French, German, Spanish and English, and the Episcopals of Bishop, the Cathedral and three other churches. The Methodists and Presbyterians have three or four each and there are Congregationalists, Baptists, the Unitarian and other societies. On my way to church I met two classmates of mine at Harvard standing in a doorway, one a lawyer and the other a teacher and made appointments for a future meeting. A little further on I came upon another Harvard man, a fine scholar and wit, and full of cleverness and good humor who invited me to go to breakfast with him at the French house. He was a bachelor and a late riser on Sundays. I asked him to show me the way to Bishop Kipp's church. He hesitated, looked a little confused and admitted that he was not as well up in certain classes of knowledge as in others but by desperate guess pointed out a wooden building at the foot of the street which anyone might have seen could not be right and which turned out to be an African Baptist meeting house. But my friend had capital points of character and I owed much of the pleasure of my visit to his attentions. The congregation at the Bishop's church was precisely like one you would meet in New York, Philadelphia or Boston. To be sure, the identity of the service makes one feel at once at home but the people were alike nearly all of the English race though from all parts of the union. The latest French bonnets were at the head of the chief pews and businessmen at the foot. The music was without character but there was an instructive sermon and the church was full. I found that there were no services at any of the Protestant churches in the afternoon. They have two services on Sunday at 11 a.m. and after dark. The afternoon is spent at home or in friendly visiting or teaching of Sunday schools or other humane or social duties. This is as much the practice with what at home are called the strictest denominations as with any other. Indeed I found individuals as well as public bodies affected in a marked degree by a change of oceans and by Californian life. One Sunday afternoon I was surprised at receiving the card of a man I had last known some fifteen years ago as a strict and formal deacon of a congregational society in New England. He was a deacon still in San Francisco a leader in all pious works devoted to his denomination and to total abstinence the same internally but externally what a change. Gone was the downcast eye the baited breath the solemn non-natural voice the watchful gait stepping as though he felt himself responsible for the balance of the moral universe. He walked with a stride an uplifted open countenance his face covered with beard whiskers and mustache his voice strong and natural and in short he had put off the New England deacon and become a human being. In a visit of an hour I learned much from him about the religious societies the moral reforms the dash aways total abstinence societies on the young and wilder parts of society and then of the village's committee of which he was a member and of more secular points of interest. In one of the parlors of the hotel I saw a man of about sixty years of age with his feet bandaged and resting in a chair whom somebody addressed by the name of Lees note pronounced Lees Reader's note this is spelled L-I-E-S Lees, thought I that must be the man who came across the country from Kentucky to Monterey while we lay there in the pilgrim in 1835 and made a passage in the alert when he used to shoot with his rifle bottles hung from the top-gallant studying boom-ends he married the beautiful Dono Rosalia Vajo sister of Don Guadalupe he had the same high features in sandy hair I put my chair beside him and began conversation as anyone may do in California yes he was the Mr. Lees and when I gave my name he professed at once to remember me and spoke of my book I found that almost I might perhaps say quite every American in California had read it for when California broke out as the phrase is in 1848 and so large a portion of the Anglo-Saxon race flocked to it no book upon California but mine many who were on the coast at the time the book refers to and afterwards read it and remembered the pilgrim and alert thought they also remembered me but perhaps more did remember me than I was inclined at first to believe for the novelty of a collegian coming out before the mast had drawn more attention to me than I was aware of at the time late in the afternoon as there were vespers Catholic churches I went to that of Notre Dame d'Avejruris the congregation was French and a sermon in French was preached by an abbey the music was excellent all things airy and tasteful and making one feel as if in one of the chapels in Paris the Cathedral of St. Mary which I afterwards visited where the Irish attend was a contrast indeed and more like one of our stifling Catholic churches in Boston or New York with intelligence in so small proportion to the number of faces during the three Sundays I was in San Francisco I visited three of the Episcopal churches and the congregational a Chinese mission chapel and on the Sabbath Saturday a Jewish synagogue the Jews are a wealthy and powerful class here the Chinese too are numerous and do a great part of the manual labor and small shop keeping and have some wealthy mercantile houses it is noticeable that the European continental fashions prevailed generally in this city French cooking lunch at noon and dinner at the end of the day with café noir after meals and to a great extent the European Sunday to all which emigrants from the United States and Great Britain seemed to adapt themselves to the dinners which were given to me at French restaurants where it seemed to me a poor judge of such matters to be sure as sumptuous and as good in dishes and wines as I have found in Paris but I had a relish maker which my friends at table did not suspect the remembrance of the foxtail dinners I eat here 24 years before August 17th the customs of California are free and any person who knows about my book speaks to me the newspapers have announced the arrival of the veteran pioneer of all I hardly walk out without meeting or making acquaintances I have already been invited to deliver the anniversary oration before the pioneer society to celebrate the settlement of San Francisco any man is qualified for election into this society who came to California before 1853 what moderns they are I tell them of the time when Richardson's santi of 1835 not his adobe house of 1836 was the only human habitation between the mission and the prosidio and when the vast bay with all its tributaries and recesses was a solitude and yet I am but little past 40 years of age they point out the place where Richardson's adobe house stood and tell me that the first court and town council were convened in it the first protestant worship performed in it and in it the first capital trial by the village's committee held I am taken down to the wars by antiquarians of 10 or 12 years range to identify the two points now known as Clarks and Rincon which formed the little cove of Yerba Buena where we used to beach our boats and now filled up and built upon the island we called Wood Island where we spent the cold days and nights of December in our launch in getting wood for a year supply is clean shorn of trees and the bare rocks of Alcatraz Island an entire fortress I have looked at the city from the water and at the water and island from the city but I can see nothing that recalls the times gone by except the venerable mission the ruinous prosidio the high hills in the rear of the town and the great stretches of the bay in all directions today I took a California horse of the old style the run, the loping gate and visited the prosidio the walls stand as they did with some changes made to accommodate a small garrison of United States troops it has a noble situation and I saw from it a clippership of the very largest class coming through the gate of their foreign aft cells thence I rode to the fort now nearly finished on the southern shore of the gate and made an inspection of it it is very expensive and of the latest style one of the engineers here is Custis Lee who has just left West Point at the head of his class a son of Colonel Robert E. Lee who distinguished himself in the Mexican war another morning I rode out to the mission Dolores eventually a solitary aspect enhanced by it's surroundings of the most uncongenial rapidly growing modernisms the horror of ages surrounded by the brightest slightest and rapidest of modern growths it's old belfries still clanged with the discordant bells and mass was saying within for it is used as a place of worship for the extreme south part of the city in one of my walks about the wharves I found a pile of dry hides lying by the side of a vessel here was something to feelingly persuade me what I had been to recall a past scarce credible to myself I stood lost in reflection what were these hides what were they not to us to me a boy 24 years ago these were our constant labor our chief object our almost habitual thought they brought us out here they kept us out here and it was only by getting them that we could escape from the coast and return to home and civilized life if it had not been that I might be seen I should have seized one slung it over my head and walked off with it and thrown it by the old toss I do not believe yet a lost art to the ground how they called up to my mind the months of curing in San Diego the year and more of beach and surf work and the steving of the ship for home I was in a dream of San Diego San Pedro with its hills so steep for taking up goods and it stones so hard to our bare feet and the cliffs of San Juan all this too is no more the entire hide business is of the past and to the present inhabitants of California a dim tradition the gold discoveries drew off all men from the gathering or curing of hides the inflowing population made an end of the great droves of cattle and now not a vessel pursues the I was about to say dear the dreary once hated business of gathering hides upon the coast and the beach of San Diego was abandoned and its hide houses have disappeared meeting a respectable looking citizen on the wharf I inquired of him how the hide trade was carried on oh said he there is very little of it and that is all here the few that are brought in are placed under sheds in winter or left out on the wharf in summer and are loaded from wharves into the vessels alongside they form parts of cargos of other materials I really felt too much instant to express to him the cause of my interest in the subject and only added then the old business of trading up and down the coast and curing hides is all over oh yes sir said he those old times of the pilgrim in alert in California that we read about are gone by Saturday August 20th the steamer senator makes regular trips up and down the coast between San Francisco and San Diego calling it intermediate ports this is my opportunity to revisit the old scenes she sells today and I am off steaming among the great clippers anchored in the harbor and gliding rapidly around the point past Alcatraz Island the lighthouse and through the fortified golden gate and bending to the southward all done in two or three hours which in the alert under canvas with head tides variable winds and sweeping currents to deal with took us full two days among the passengers I noticed an elderly gentleman thin with sandy hair and a face that seemed familiar he took off his glove and showed one tripled hand it must be he I went to him and said Captain Wilson I believe yes that was his name I knew you sir when you commanded the Iocucho on this coast in old hide drawing times in 1835 1836 he was quickened by this and at once inquiries were made on each side and we were in full talk about the pilgrim and alert Iocucho and Loriott the California and Legota I found he had been very much flattered by the praise I had bestowed in my book on his seamanship especially in bringing the pilgrim to her birth in San Diego harbor after she had drifted successively into the Legota and Loriott and was coming to him I had made a pet of his brig the Iocucho which pleased him almost as much as my remembrance of his bride and their wedding which I saw at Santa Barbara in 1836 Donald Ramona was now the mother of a large family and Wilson assured me that if I would visit him at his rancho near San Luis Obispo I should find her still a handsome woman and very glad to see me how we walked the deck together hour after hour talking over the old times the ships the captains the crews the traders on shore the ladies the missions the Southeasters indeed where could we stop he had sold the Iocucho in Chile for a vessel of war and had given up the sea and had been for years a ranchero I learned from others that he had become one of the most wealthy and respectable farmers in the state and that his rancho was well worth visiting Thompson he said hadn't the sailor in him and he never could laugh enough at his fiasco in San Diego and his reception by Bradshaw Falcon was a sailor and a navigator he did not know what would become of George Marsh except that he had left him in Caleo nor could he tell me anything of Hanson Bill Jackson nor have Captain Nye the Lorient I told him all I then knew of the ships the masters and the officers I found he had kept some run of my history and needed little information old Sr. Noriega of Santa Barbara he told me was dead and Don Carlos and Don Santiago but I should find their children there now in the middle of life Don Augustia he said I had made famous by my praises of her beauty and dancing and I should have from her a royal reception she had been a widow and remarried since and had a daughter as handsome as herself the descendants of Noriega had taken the ancestral name of De La Garra as they were nobles of old Spain by birth and the boy Pablo who used to make passages in the alert was now Don Pablo de la Garra a senator in the state legislature for Santa Barbara County the points of the country too we noticed as we passed them Santa Cruz San Luis Obispo Point Ano Nuevo the opening to Monterey which to my disappointment we did not visit no Monterey the prettiest town on the coast in its capital and seat of customs had gotten no advantage from the great changes was out of the way of commerce and of the travel to the mines in great rivers and it's not worth stopping at point conception we passed in the night a cherry light gleaming over the waters from its tall lighthouse standing on its outermost peak point conception the word was enough to recall all our experience and dreads of gales swept decks top must carried away and the hardships of a coast service in the winter but Captain Wilson tells me that the climate has altered that the southeasters are no longer the bane of the coast they once were and that vessels now anchor inside the kelp as Santa Barbara and San Pedro all the year round I should have thought this owing to spending his winters in a ranch instead of on the deck of Yaya Kucho had not the same thing been told me by others passing round point conception is steering easterly we open the islands that form with the mainland the canal of Santa Barbara there they are Santa Cruz and Rosa and there is a beautiful point Santa Buena Ventura and there lies Santa Barbara on its plane with its ample theater of high hills and distant mountains there is the old white mission with its bell freeze and here the town with its one-story adobe houses with here and there a two-story wooden house of later build yet little has it altered the same repose in the golden sunlight and glorious climate sheltered by its hills and then more be mindful than anything else there roars and tumbles upon the beach the same grand surf with the Pacific as on the beautiful day when the pilgrim after her five months voyage dropped her weary anchors here the same bright blue ocean the surf making just the same monotonous melancholy roar and the same dreamy town the gleaming white mission as when we beached our boats for the first time riding over the breakers with shouting canakas the three small traitors being an anchor in the offing but now we are the only vessel and that an unromantic sail-less, spar-less, engine-driven hulk I landed in the surf in the old style but it was not high enough to excite us the only change being that I was somehow unaccountably a passenger I did not have to jump overboard and city the boat and run her up by the gunnels Santa Barbara has gained but little I should not know nothing I saw that she was now a seaport of the United States a part of the enterprising Yankee nation and not still a lifeless Mexican town at the same old house where Sr. Noriega lived on the piazza in front of the courtyard where was the gay scene of the marriage of her agent Mr. Robertson and Dona Anita where Don Juan Bandini and Dona Augustia danced Don Pablo de la Guerra received me in a courtly fashion I passed the day with the family and in walking about the place and ate the old dinner with its accompaniments of frijoles native olives and grapes and native wines in due time I paid my respects to Dona Augustia and notwithstanding what Wilson told me I could hardly believe that after 24 years there would still be so much of the enchanting woman about her she thanked me for the kind and as she called them greatly exaggerated compliments I had paid her and her daughter told me that all travelers who came to Santa Barbara called to see her mother and that she herself never expected to live long enough to be a belle Mr. Alfred Robinson our agent in 1835-36 was here with a part of his family I did not know how he received me remembering what I had printed to the world about him at the time when I took little thought that the world was going to read it but there was no sign of offence only a cordiality which gave him as between us rather the advantage and status the people of this region are giving attention to sheep raising, wine making and the raising of olives just enough to keep the town from going backwards but evening is drawing on and our boat sells tonight so refusing a horse or carriage I walk down not unwilling to be a little early I may pace up and down the beach looking off to the islands and the points and watching the roaring tumbling bellows how softening is the effect of time it touches us through the affections I almost feel as if I were lamenting the passing away of something loved and dear the boats, the canakas the hides mild shipmates death, change, distance lend them a character which makes them quite another thing from the vulgar, worrisome toil of uninteresting forced manual labor the breeze freshened as we rode out to sea and the wild waves rolled over the red sun on the broad horizon of the pacific but it is summer and in summer there can be no bad weather in California every day is pleasant a feature forbids a drop of rain to fall by day or night or a wind to excite itself beyond a fresh summer breeze End of Epilogue Part 1 Epilogue Part 2 of Two Years Before the Mast This LibriVox recording is in the public domain Two Years Before the Mast by Richard Henry Dana Jr. Epilogue Part 2 The next morning we found ourselves in the bay of San Pedro here was this hated this thoroughly detested spot although we lay near I could scarce recognize the hill up which we rolled and dragged and pushed and carried our heavy loads and down which we pitched the hides to carry them barefooted over the rocks to the floating long boat it was no longer the landing place one had been made at the head of the creek and boats discharged and took off boats from a mole or wharf in a quiet place safe from southeasters a tug ran to take off passengers from the steamer to the wharf for the trade of Los Angeles is sufficient to support such a vessel I got the captain to land me privately in a small boat at the old place by the hill I dismissed the boat and alone found my way to the high ground I safe found my way the neglect and weather had left but few traces of the steep road the hide vessels had built to the top the cliff off which we used to throw the hides and where I spent nights watching them was more easily found the population was doubled that is to say there were two houses instead of one on the hill I stood on the brow and looked out toward the offing the Santa Catalina island and nearer the melancholy dead man's island with its painful tradition and recalled the gloomy days that followed the flogging and fancied the pilgrimage anchor in the offing but the tug is going toward our steamer and I must awake and be off I walked along the shore to the new landing place where were two or three storehouses and other buildings forming a small depot and a stagecoach I found went daily between this place and the pueblo I got a seat on the top of the coach to which were tackled six little less than wild California horses each horse had a man at his head and when the driver had got his reins in hand he gave the word all the horses were let go at once and away they went on a spring tearing over the ground the driver only keeping them from going the wrong way for they had a wide level pampa to run over the whole thirty miles to the pueblo this plane is almost treeless with no grass at least none now in the drought of mid-summer and is filled with squirrel holes and alive with squirrels as we changed horses twice we did not slack in our speed until we turned into the streets of the pueblo the pueblo de los ángeles I found a large and flourishing town of about twenty thousand inhabitants with brick sidewalks and blocks of stone or brick houses the three principal traders when we were here for hides in the pilgrim and alert are still among the chief traders of the place Stearns, temple and warner the two former being reputed very rich I dined with Mr. Stearns now a very old man and met there Don Juan Bandini to whom I had given a good deal of notice in my book from him, as indeed from everyone in this town with the kindest attentions the wife of Don Juan who was a beautiful young girl when we were on the coast Donia Refugio daughter of Don Santiago Arguello the commandante of San Diego was with him and still handsome this is one of several instances I have noticed of the preserving quality of the California climate here too was Henry Melis who came out with me before the mast in the pilgrim and left the brig to be agents clerk on shore he had experienced varying fortunes here and was now married to a Mexican lady and had a family I dined with him and in the afternoon he drove me round to see the vineyards the chief objects in this region the vintage of last year was estimated at half a million of gallons every year new square miles of ground are laid down to vineyards promises to be the center of one of the largest wine producing regions in the world grapes are a drug here and I found a great abundance of figs, olives, peaches, pears and melons the climate is well suited to these fruits but is too hot and dry for successful wheat crops towards evening we started off in the stagecoach with again our relays of six mad horses and reached the creek before dark though it was late at night before we got on board the steamer which was slowly moving her wheels under way for San Diego as we skirted along the coast Wilson and I recognized or thought we did in the clear moonlight the rude white mission of San Juan Capistrano and its cliff from which I had swung down by a pair of hellyards to save a few hides a boy who could not be prudential and who caught it every chance for adventure as we made the high point off San Diego Point Loma we were greeted by the cheering presence of a lighthouse as we swept rounded in the early morning there before us lay the little harbor of San Diego its low spit of sand where the water runs so deep the opposite flats where the alert grounded in starting for home the low hills without trees and almost without brush the quiet little beach but the chief objects the hide houses my eye looked for in vain they were gone all and left no mark behind I wished to be alone so I let the other passengers go up to the town and was quietly pulled ashore in a boat and left to myself the recollections and the emotions all were sad and only sad Fugit interia fugit irreparably tempest the past was real the present all about me was unreal unnatural repellent I saw the big ships lying in the stream the alert the california the rosa with her italians then the handsome Ayacucho my favorite the poor dear old pilgrim the home of hardship and hopelessness the boats passing to and fro the cries of the sailors at the capstan or falls the peopled beach the large hide houses with their gangs of men and the kanakas interspersed everywhere all all were gone not a vestige to mark where one hide house stood the oven too was gone I searched for its site and found where I thought it should be a few broken bricks and bits of mortar I alone was left of all and how strangely was I here what changes to me where were they all why should I care for them poor kanakas and sailors the refuse of civilization the outlaws and beachcombers of the pacific time and death seemed to transfigure them doubtless nearly all were dead but how had they died and where in hospitals in fever climbs in dens of vise or falling from the mast lifted from the wreck when for a moment like a drop of rain he sinks into thy depths with bubbling groan without a grave unnailed uncoffin'd and unknown the light-hearted boys are now hardened middle-aged men if the seas, rocks, fevers and the deadlier enemies that beset a sailor's life on shore have spared them and the then strong men have bowed themselves to them even the animals are gone the colony of dogs the broods of poultry the useful horses but the coyotes bark still in the woods for they belong not to man and are not touched by his changes I walked slowly up the hill finding my way among the few bushes for the path was long grown over and sat down where we used to rest in carrying our burdens of wood and to look out for vessels to ride though so seldom be coming down from the windward to rally myself by calling to mind my own better fortune and nobler lot and cherished surroundings at home was impossible born down by depression the day being yet at its noon and the sun over the old point it is four miles to the town the presidio I have walked it often and can do it once more with familiar objects and it seemed to me that I remembered them better than those of any other place I had ever been in the opening to the little cave the low hills where we cut wood and killed rattlesnakes and where our dogs chased the coyotes and the black ground where so many of the ship's crew and beachcombers used to bring up on their return at the end of a liberty day and spend the night sub-jove the little town of San Diego has undergone no change whatever that I can see it certainly has not grown it is still, like Santa Barbara a Mexican town the four principal houses of the gente de rasón of the bandinis, estudios arguellos and picos are the chief houses now but all the gentlemen and their families too I believe are gone the big vulgar shopkeeper and trader was once dead Tom Ridington who kept the rival Pulporea fell from his horse when drunk and was found nearly eaten up by coyotes and I can scarce find a person whom I remember I went into a familiar one-story adobe house with its piazza and earthen floor inhabited by a respectable lower-class family by the name of Muchado and inquired if any of the family remained a middle-aged woman recognized me for she had heard I was onboard the steamer and told me she had married a shipmate of mine, Jack Stewart who went out as second mate the next voyage but left the ship and married and settled here she said he wished very much to see me in a few minutes he came in and his sincere pleasure in meeting me was extremely grateful we talked over old times as long I was glad to hear that he was sober and doing well Donia Tomasa Pico I found and talked with she was the only person of the old upper-class that remained on the spot if I rightly recollect I found an American family here with whom I dined Doyle and his wife nice young people Doyle agent for the great line of coaches to run to the frontier of the old states I must complete the acts of pious remembrance so I take a horse and make a run out to the old mission where Ben Stimson and I went the first liberty day we had after we left Boston anti page 115 all has gone to decay the buildings are unused and ruinous and the large gardens show now only wild cactuses, willows and a few olive trees a fast run brings me back in time to take leave of the few I knew and who knew me and to reach the steamer before she sails a last look yes, last for life to the beach, the hills the low point, the distant town as we round Point Loma and the first beams of the lighthouse strike out towards the setting sun Wednesday, August 24th at anchor at San Pedro by daylight but instead of being roused out of the folksle to row the long boat ashore and to bring off a load of hides before breakfast we were served with breakfast in the cabin and again took our drive with the wild horses to the pueblo and spent the day seeing nearly the same persons as before and again getting back by dark we steamed again for Santa Barbara where we only lay an hour and passed through its canal and round Point Conception stopping at San Luis Obispo to land my friend as I truly may call him after this long passage together Captain Wilson whose most earnest invitation to stop here and visit him at his rancho I was obliged to decline Friday evening 26th August we entered the Golden Gate passed the lighthouses and forts and clipperships at anchor and came to our dock with this great city on its high hills and rising surfaces and full of eager life making San Francisco my headquarters I paid visits to various parts of the state down the bay to Santa Clara with its live oaks and sycamores and its Jesuit college for boys and San Jose where is the best girl school in the state kept by the sisters of Notre Dame a town now famous for a year's session of the legislature of a thousand drinks and thence to the rich Almedin quick silver mines returning on the Contra Costa side through the rich agricultural country with its ranchos and the vast grants of the Castro and Soto families where farming and fruit raising are done on so large a scale another excursion was up the San Joaquin to Stockton a town of some ten thousand inhabitants a hundred miles from San Francisco and crossing the Tulumne and Stanislaus and Merced by the little Spanish town of Hornitos and Snellings Tavern at the fort of the Merced where so many fatal fights were had thence I went to Mariposa County and Colonel Fremont's mines and made an interesting visit to the Colonel as he is called all over the country and Mrs. Fremont a heroine equal to either fortune the salons of Paris and the drying rooms of New York and Washington this life of the remote and wild mining regions of Mariposa with their fine family of spirited clever children after a rest there we went on to Clark's camp and the big trees where I measured one tree ninety seven feet into circumference without its bark and the bark is usually eighteen inches thick and rode through another which lay on the ground a shell with all the insides out knitted and sitting at full height in the saddle then to the wonderful Yosemite Valley itself a stupendous miracle of nature with its dome its capitan its walls of three thousand feet of perpendicular height but a valley of streams of waterfalls from the torrent to the mere shimmer of a bridal veil only enough to reflect a rainbow with their plunges of twenty five hundred feet or their smaller falls of eight hundred with nothing at the base but thick mists which form and trickle and then run and at last plunge into the blue Merced that flows through the center of the valley back by the Coulterville Trail the peaks of Sierra Nevada in sight across the north fork of the Merced by Gentry's Gulch over hills and through canyons to Fremont's again and then to Stockton and San Francisco all this at the end of August when there has been no rain for four months and the air is dear and very hot and the ground perfectly dry windmills to raise water for artificial irrigation of small patches seen all over the landscape while we travel through square miles of hot dust where they tell us and truly that in winter and early spring we should be up to our knees in flowers a country too this gold digging is so common and unnoticed that the large six horse stagecoach in which I traveled from Stockton to Hornito's turned off in the high road for a Chinaman who with his pan and washer was working up a hole which an American had abandoned but where the minute and patient industry of the Chinaman averaged a few dollars a day these visits were so full of interest with grandeurs and humours of all sorts that I am strongly tempted to describe them but I remember that I am not to write a journal of a visit over the new California but to sketch briefly the contrasts with the old spots of 1835-6 and I forbear how strange and eventful has been the brief history of this marvelous city San Francisco in 1835 there was one board shanty in 1836 one adobe house in the same spot in 1847 a population of 450 persons who organized a town government then came the Auresoca Fames the flocking together of many of the worst spirits of christened um a sudden birth of a city of canvas and boards entirely destroyed by fire five times in 18 months with a loss of 16 millions of dollars and as often rebuilt until it became a solid city of brick and stone of nearly 100,000 inhabitants with all the accompaniments of wealth and culture and now in 1859 the most quiet and well-governed city of its size in the United States but it has been through its season of heaven defying crime violence and blood from which it was rescued and handed back to soberness, morality and good by that peculiar invention of the Anglo-Saxon Republic in America the solemn awe inspiring vigilance committee of the most grave and responsible citizens the last resort of the thinking and the good taken to only when vice, fraud and ruffianism have entrenched themselves beyond the forms of law, suffrage and ballot and there is no hope but an organized force whose action must be instant and thorough the state will be worse than before a history of the passage of this city through these ordeals and through its almost incredible financial extremes should be written by a pen which not only accuracy shall govern but imagination shall inspire I cannot pause for the civility of referring to the many kind attentions I received and the society of educated men and women from all parts of the union I met with, where New England, the Carolinas, Virginia and the New West sat side by side with English, French and German civilization my stay in California was interrupted by an absence of nearly four months when I sailed for the sandwich islands in the noble Boston clippership Mastiff, which was burned at sea to the water's edge we escaping in boats and carried by a friendly British Johanna Lulu whence after a deeply interesting visit of three months in that most fascinating group of islands with its natural and its moral wonders I returned to San Francisco in an American whaler and found myself again in my quarters on the morning of Sunday, December 11th, 1859 my first visit after my return was to Sacramento a city of about 40,000 inhabitants more than a hundred miles inland from San Francisco on the Sacramento where was the capital of the state and where were fleets of river steamers and a large inland commerce here I saw the inauguration of a governor, Mr. Latham a young man from Massachusetts much my junior and met a member of the state senate a man who, as a carpenter repaired my father's house at home some ten years before and two more senators from Southern California relics of another age Don Andres Pico from San Diego and Don Pablo de la Guerra whom I have mentioned as meeting at Santa Barbara I had a good deal of conversation with these gentlemen who stood alone in an assembly of Americans who had conquered their country spared pillars of the past Don Andres had fought us at San Pasqual and Sepulveda's Rancho in 1846 and as he fought bravely not a common thing among the Mexicans and indeed repulsed Kearney is always treated with respect he had the satisfaction dear to the proud Spanish heart of making a speech before a senate of Americans in favor of the retention in office of an officer of our army who was wounded at San Pasqual and whom some wretched caucus were trying to displace to carry out a political job Don Andres's magnanimity and indignation carried the day my last visit in this part of the country was to a new and rich farming region the Napa Valley the United States Navy Yard at Mayor Island the River Goldworkings and the Geysers and old Mr. John Yance Rancho on board the steamer found Mr. Edward Stanley formerly member of Congress from North Carolina who became my companion for the greater part of the trip I also met a revival on the spot of an acquaintance of twenty years ago Don Guadalupe Vallejo I may say acquaintance for although I was then before the mast he knew my story and as he spoke English well used to hold many conversations with me when in the boat or on shore he received me with true earnestness and would not hear of my passing his estate without visiting him he reminded me of a remark I made to him once when pulling him ashore in the boat when he was commandant at the Presidio I learned that the two Vallejos Guadalupe and Salvador owned at an early time nearly all Napa and Sonoma having princely estates but they have not much left they were nearly ruined by their bargain with the state that they would put up the public buildings if the capitol should be placed at Vallejo then a town of some promise they spent one hundred thousand dollars the capitol was moved there and in two years removed to San Jose on another contract the town fell to pieces and the houses chiefly wooden were taken down and removed I accepted the old gentleman's invitation so far as to stop at Vallejo to breakfast the United States Navy Yard at Mayor Island near Vallejo is large and well placed with deep fresh water the old independence and the sloop Decatur and two steamers were there and they were experimenting on building a dispatch boat the Sagina of California Timber I have no excuse for attempting to describe my visit through the fertile and beautiful Napa Valley nor even what exceeded that in interest my visit to old John Yount at his rancho where I heard from his own lips some of his most interesting stories of hunting and trapping and Indian fighting during an adventurous life of forty years of such work between our back settlements in Missouri and Arkansas and the mountains of California trapping in Colorado and Gila and his celebrated dream thrice repeated which led him to organize a party to go out over the mountains that did actually rescue from death by starvation the wretched remnants of the Donner party I must not pause for the dreary country of the geysers the screaming escapes of steam the sulfur the boiling cauldrons of black and yellow and green and the region of Gehenna through which runs a quiet stream of water nor for the park scenery and captivating ranchos of the Napa Valley where farming is done on so grand a scale where I have seen a man plow a furrow by little red flags on sticks to keep his range by until nearly out of sight and where the wits tell us he returns the next day on the back furrow a region where at Christmas time I have seen old strawberries still on the vines by the side of vines in full blossom for the next crop and grapes in the same stages and open windows and yet a grateful wood fire on the hearth in early morning nor for the titanic operations of hydraulic surface mining where large mountain streams are diverted from their ancient beds and made to do the work beyond the reach of all other agents of washing out valleys and carrying away hills on the surface of the country to expose the stores of gold hidden for centuries in the darkness of their earthly depths January 10, 1860 I am again in San Francisco and my revisit to California is closed I have touched too lightly and rapidly for much impression upon the reader on my last visit into the interior but as I have said in a mere continuation to a narrative of a seafaring life on the coast I am only to carry the reader with me on a visit to those scenes in which the public has long manifested so gratifying in interest but it seemed to me that slight notices of these entirely new parts of the country would not be out of place for they served to put in strong contrast with the solitudes of 1835-6 the developed interior with its mines and agricultural wealth rapidly filling population and its large cities so far from the coast with their education, religion, arts and trade on the morning of the 11th January 1860 I passed for the eighth time through the Golden Gate on my way across the delightful Pacific to the Oriental World with its civilization 3,000 years older than that I was leaving behind as the shores of California faded in the distance and the summits of the coast range sank under the blue horizon I bade farewell yes, I do not doubt forever to those scenes which, however changed or unchanged, must always possess an ineffable interest for me End of epilogue part 2 Epilogue part 3 of two years before the mast this LibriVox recording is in the public domain two years before the mast by Richard Henry Dana Jr. epilogue part 3 it is time my fellow travelers and I should part company but I have been requested by a great many persons to give some account of the subsequent history of the vessels and their crews with which I had made them acquainted I attempt the following sketches in deference to these suggestions and not I trust with any undue estimate of the general interest my narrative may have created something less than a year after my return on the alert and when my eyes having recovered I was again in college life I found one morning in the newspapers among the arrivals of the day before quote the Brigh Pilgrim Falcon from San Diego, California and quote I was down on Ann Street and on my way to Hackstad's boarding house where I knew Tom Harris and others would lodge entering the front room I heard my name called from amid a group of blue jackets and several sunburned tar-coloured men came forward to speak to me they were at first a little embarrassed by the dress and style in which they had never seen me and one of them was calling me Mr. Dana but I soon stopped that and we were shipmates once more first there was Tom Harris in a characteristic occupation I had made him promise to come and see me when we parted in San Diego he had got a directory of Boston found the street and number of my father's house and by a study of the plan of the city had laid out his course and was committing it to memory he said he could go straight to the house without asking a question and so he could for I took the book from him and he gave his course naming each street and turned to right or left directly to the door Tom had been second made of the pilgrim and had laid up no means some of money true to his resolution he was going to England to find his mother and he entered into the comparative advantages of taking his money home in gold or in bills a matter of some moment as this was in the disastrous financial year of 1837 he seemed to have his ideas well arranged but I took him to a leading banker whose advice he followed and declining my invitation to go up and show himself to my friends he was off for New York that afternoon to sail the next day for Liverpool the last I ever saw of Tom Harris was as he passed down Tremont Street on the sidewalk a man dragging a handcard in the street by his side on which were his voyage-worn chest his mattress and a box of nautical instruments Sam seemed to have got funny again and he and John the Swede learned that Captain Thompson had several months before sailed in command of a ship for the coast of Sumatra and that their chance of proceedings against him at law was hopeless Sam was afterwards lost in a bridge off the coast of Brazil when all hands went down of John and the rest of the men I have never heard the marble-head boy Sam turned out badly and although he had influential friends never allowed them to improve his condition the old carpenter, the Finn of whom the cook stood in such awe and he, page 41 had fallen sick and died in Santa Barbara and was buried ashore Jim Hall, from the Kennebec who sailed with us before the mast and was made second made in Foster's place came home chief made of the pilgrim I have often seen him since his lot has been prosperous as he well deserved it should be he has commanded the largest ships and when I last saw him was going to the Pacific coast of South America to take charge of a line of male steamers poor luckless Foster I have twice seen he came into my rooms in Boston after I had become a barrister and my narrative had been published and told me he was chief made of a big ship that he had heard I had said some things unfavorable of him in my book that he had just bought it and was going to read it that night and if I had said anything unfair of him he would punish me if he found me in State Street I surveyed him from head to foot and said to him Foster you are not a formidable man when I last saw you and I don't believe you are now either he was of my opinion or thought I had spoken of him well enough for the next and last time I met him he was civil and pleasant I believe I omitted to state that Mr. Andrew B. Amorzine the chief made of the pilgrim an estimable kind and trustworthy man had a difficulty with Captain Faucon who thought him slack was turned off duty and sent home with us in the alert Captain Thompson instead of giving him the place of a mate off duty put him into the narrow between decks where a space not over four feet high had been left out among the hides and there compelled him to live the whole weary some voyage through trades and tropics and around Cape Horn with nothing to do not allowed to converse or walk with the officers and obliged to get his grub himself from the galley in the tin pot and kid of a common sailor I used to talk with him as much as I had opportunity to but his lot was wretched and in every way wounding to his feelings after our arrival Captain Thompson was obliged to make him compensation for this treatment it happens that I have never heard of him since Henry Melis who had been an accounting house in Boston and left the folks all on the coast to be agents clerk and whom I met a married man at Los Angeles in 1859 died at that place a few years ago not having been successful in commercial life Ben Stimpson left the sea for the fresh water in prairies settled in Detroit as a merchant and when I visited that city in 1863 I was rejoiced to find him a prosperous and respected man and the same generous hearted shipmate as ever this ends the catalog of the pilgrims original crew except her first master Captain Thompson he was not employed by the same firm again and got up a voyage to the coast of Sumatra for Pepper the classmate of mine, Mr. Channing went to his super cargo not having consulted me as to the captain first Captain Thompson got into difficulties with another American vessel on the coast which charged him with having taken some advantage of her in getting Pepper and then with the natives who accused him of having obtained too much Pepper for his weights the natives seized him one afternoon as he landed in his boat and demanded of him to sign an order on the super cargo for the Spanish dollars that they said were due them on pain of being imprisoned on shore he never failed in pluck and now ordered his boat aboard leaving him ashore the officer to tell the super cargo to obey no direction except under his hand for several successive days and nights his ship the Alcicapé lay in the burning sun rain squalls and thunder clouds coming over the high mountains waiting for a word from him toward evening of the fourth or fifth day he was seen on the beach hailing for the boat the natives finding they could not force more money from him were afraid to hold him longer and had let him go he sprang into the boat urged her off with the utmost eagerness leaped on board the ship like a tiger his eyes flashing in his face ordered the anchor away and the top sails set the four guns to on a side loaded with all sorts of devilish stuff and wore her round and keeping as close into the bamboo villages he could gave them both broad sides slam bang into the midst of the houses and people and stood out to see as his excitement passed off headache langer fever set in the deadly coast fever contracted from the water and nightdews on shore and his maddened temper he ordered the ship to Penang and never saw the deck again he died on the passage and was buried at sea Mr. Channing who took care of him in his sickness and delirium caught the fever from him but as we gratefully remember did not die until the ship made port and he was under the kindly roof of a hospitable family in Penang the chief mate also took the fever and the second mate and crew deserted and although the chief mate recovered and took the ship to Europe and home the voyage was a melancholy disaster in a tour I made around the world in 1859-1860 of which my revisit to California was the beginning I went to Penang in that fairy-like scene of sea and sky and shore where the real earth can be with its fruits and flowers of a perpetual summer somewhere in which still lurks the deadly fever I found the tomb of my kinsman classmate and friend standing beside his grave I tried not to think that his life had been sacrificed to the faults and violence of another I tried not to think too hardly of that other who at least had suffered in death the dear old pilgrim herself she was sold at the end of this voyage to a merchant in New Hampshire who employed her on short voyages and after a few years I read of her total loss at sea by fire off the coast of North Carolina Captain Faokon who took out the alert and brought home the pilgrim spent many years in command of vessels in the Indian and Chinese seas and was in our volunteer navy during the late war commanding several large vessels in succession on the blockade of the Carolinas with the rank of lieutenant he has now given up the sea but still keeps it under his eye from the piazza of his house on the most beautiful hill in the environs of Boston I have the pleasure of meeting him often once in speaking of the alerts crew in a company of gentlemen I heard him say that that crew was exceptional he had passed all his life at sea but whether before the mast or a BAFTA whether officer or master he had never met such a crew and never should expect to and that the two officers of the alert long ago shipmasters agreed with him that for intelligence, knowledge of duty and willingness to perform it pride in the ship, her appearance and sailing and in absolute reliability they never had seen her equal especially he spoke of his favorite seaman French John John after a few more years at sea became a boatman and kept his neat boat at the end of granite wharf and was ready to take all but delighted to take any of us of the old alerts crew to sail down the harbour one day Captain Faucon went to the end of the wharf to board a vessel in the stream and hailed for John there was no response and his boat was not there he inquired of a boatman near where John was the time had come that comes to all there was no loyal voice to respond to the familiar call the hatches had closed over him his boat was sold to another and he had left not a trace behind we could not find out even where he was buried Mr. Richard Brown of Marblehead our chief made in the alert commanded many of our noblest ships in the European trade a general favorite a few years ago while stepping on board his ship from the wharf he fell from the plank into the hold and was killed if he did not actually die at sea at least he died as a sailor he died on board ship our second mate Evans no one liked or cared for and I know nothing of him except that I once saw him in court a trial for some alleged petty tyranny towards his men still a subaltern officer the third mate Mr. Hatch a nephew of one of the owners though only a lad on board the ship went out chief mate next voyage and rose soon to command one of the finest clippers in the California and India trade under the new order of things a man of character, good judgment and no little cultivation of the other men before the mast in the alert I know nothing of peculiar interest when visiting with a party of ladies and gentlemen one of our largest line of battleships we were escorted about the decks by a midshipman who was explaining various matters on board when one of the party came to me and told me that there was an old sailor there with a whistle round his neck who looked at me and said of the officer he can't show him anything aboard a ship I found him out and looking into his sunburned face covered with hair and his little eyes drawn up into the smallest passages for light like a man who had peered into hundreds of northeasters there was old sails of the alert clothed in all the honors of Boson's mate we stood aside out of the cunt of the officers and had a good talk over old times I remember the contempt with which he turned on his heel to conceal his face when the midshipman, who was a grown youth could not tell the ladies the length of a fathom and said it depended on circumstances notwithstanding his advice and consolation to chips in the steerage of the alert and his story of his runaway wife and the flag-bottomed chairs Auntie, page 249 he confessed to me that he had tried marriage again and had a little tenement just outside the gate of the yard Harry Bennett, the man who had the palsy and was unfeelingly left on shore when the alert sailed came home in the pilgrim and I had the pleasure of helping to get him into the Massachusetts General Hospital when he had been there about a week I went to see him in his ward and asked him how he got along Oh, first-rate usage, sir not a hand's turn to do and all your grub brought to you, sir This is a sailor's paradise not a hand's turn to do and all your grub brought to you but an earthly paradise may pawl Bennett got tired of indoors and stillness and was soon out again and set up a stall covered with canvas at the end of one of the bridges where he could see all the passers by and turn a penny by cakes and ale The stall in time disappeared and I could learn nothing of his last end if it has come Of the lads who, beside myself, composed the gig's crew I know something of all but one Our bright-eyed, quick-witted little coxswain from the Boston Public Schools Harry May, or Harry Bluff as he was called with all his songs and jibes went the road to ruin as fast as the usual means could carry him Nat, the bucket-maker, grave and sober left the seas and, I believe, is a hack-driver in his native town although I have not had the luck to see him since the Albert hauled into her birth at the north end One cold winter evening a pull at the bell and a woman in distress wished to see me Her poor son George, George Summerby You remember him, sir? He was a boy on the alert He always talks of you He is dying in my poor house I went with her and in a small room with the most scanty furniture upon a mattress on the floor emaciated, ashy pale with hollow voice and sunken eyes lay the boy George whom we took out a small, bright boy of fourteen from a Boston Public School who fought himself into a position on board ship, anti-Page 231 and whom we brought home a tall, athletic youth that might have been the pride and support of his widowed mother There he lay, not over nineteen years of age ruined by every vice a sailor's life absorbs He took my hand in his wasted feeble fingers and talked a little with his hollow death smitten voice I was to leave town the next day for a fortnight's absence and whom had they to see to them The mother named her landlord she knew no one else able to do much for them It was the name of a physician of wealth and high social position well known in the city as the owner of many small tenements and of whom hard things had been said as to his strictness in collecting what he thought his dues Be that as it may my memory associates him only with ready and active beneficence His name has since been known the civilized world over from his having been the victim of one of the most painful tragedies records of the criminal law I tried the experiment of calling upon him and having drawn him away from the cheerful fire, sofa and curtains of a luxurious parlor I told him the simple tale of woe of one of his tenants, unknown to him even by name He did not hesitate and I well remember how, in that biting, eager air at a late hour he drew his cloak about his thin and bent form and walked off with me across the common and to the south end nearly two miles of an exposed walk to the scene of misery He gave his full share and more of kindness and material aid and, as George's mother told me, on my return had with medical aid in stores and a clergyman made the boy's end as comfortable and hopeful as possible The alert made two more voyages to the coast of California successful and without a mishap as usual and was sold by Messiers Bryant and Sturgis in 1843 to Mr. Thomas W. Williams, a merchant of New London, Connecticut who employed her in the whale trade in the Pacific She was as lucky and prosperous there as in the merchant service When I was at the Sandwich Islands in 1860 a man was introduced to me as having commanded the alert on two cruises and his friends told me that he was as proud of it as if he had commanded a frigate I am permitted to publish the following letter from the owner of the alert giving her later record and her historic end captured and burnt by the rebel Alabama New London, March 17, 1868 Richard H. Dana Esquire Dear sir, I am happy to acknowledge the receipt of your favor of the 14th instant and to answer your inquiries about the Good Ship Alert I bought her of Messiers Bryant and Sturgis in the year 1843 for my firm of Williams and Haven for a whaler in which business she was successful until captured by the rebel steamer Alabama September 1862 making a period of more than 19 years during which she took and delivered at New London upwards of 25,000 barrels of whale and sperm oil She sailed last from this port, August 30, 1862 for Herds Island, the newly discovered land south of Kurgolins commanded by Edwin Church and was captured and burned on the 9th of September following only 10 days out near or close to the Azores with 30 barrels of sperm oil on board and while her boats were off in pursuit of whales the alert was a favorite ship with all owners, officers and men who had anything to do with her and I may add almost all who heard her name asked if she was the ship the man went in who wrote the book called Two Years Before the Mask and thus we feel with you no doubt a sort of sympathy at her loss and that too in such a manner and by wicked acts of our own countrymen my partner Mr. Haven sends me a note from the office this p.m. saying that he had just found the last logbook and would send up this evening a copy of the last entry in it and if there should be anything of importance I will enclose it to you and if you have any further inquiries to put I will with great pleasure endeavor to answer them remaining very respectfully and truly yours Thomas W. Williams P.S. since writing the above I have received the extract from the logbook and enclose the same the last entry in the logbook of the alert September 9, 1862 shortly after the ship came to the wind with the main yard aback we went alongside and were hoisted up when we found we were prisoners of war and our ship apprised to the Confederate steamer Alabama we were then ordered to give up all nautical instruments and letters appertaining to any of us afterwards we were offered the privilege as they called it of joining the steamer or signing a parole of honor not to serve in the army or navy of the United States thank God no one accepted the former of these offers we were all then ordered to get our things ready in haste to go on shore the ship running off shore all the time we were allowed four boats to go on shore in and when we had got what things we could take in them we're ordered to get into the boats and pull for the shore the nearest land being about fourteen miles off which we reached in safety and shortly after saw the ship in flames so and all our bright prospects blasted by a gang of miscreants who certainly can have no regard for humanity so long as they continued to foster their so called peculiar institution which is now destroying our country end quote I love to think that our noble ship with her long record of good service and uniform success attracted and beloved in her life should have passed at her death into the lofty regions of international jurisprudence and debate forming a part of the body of the Alabama claims that like a true ship committed to her element once for all at her launching she perished at sea and without an extreme use of language we may say a victim in the cause of her country R. H. D. Jr. Boston, May 6, 1869 End of Epilogue, Part 3 End of Two Years Before the Mask by Richard Henry Dana, Jr.