ARRIVAL ON THE COAST.

49

guished. Before arriving on the coast the precaution was taken of putting up a bulwark or screen made of hides, which were fastened to stanchions, all round the vessel, so that the Indians could not see on board and discover the small number of the crew. Then, when trading with them, only one canoe was allowed to come to the vessel at a time, and that at the stern, over which all communication was held. On the evening of March 30 they arrived on the coast, and anchored in a snug harbor in Norfolk Sound, and for the next two months were busily engaged in traffic with the natives. Only one or two vessels had arrived before them, and of these they had in one respect the advantage, as the small size of the cutter enabled them to navigate the innumerable inlets and bays with which the coast is indented—often in places where a large ship could not venture-and thus secure a great number of skins, singly or in small lots, which would not have reached them had they remained outside. But, on the other hand, the risk of attack from. the Indians was proportionally greater, as they more than once met with canoes longer than their own vessel.

It was evident on various occasions that an attack upon the vessel was contemplated, and all sorts of devices were resorted to by the savages to induce them to relax their vigilance, or throw them off their guard, in order to secure the coveted opportunity for boarding the vessel. But, although the intercourse with them was always kind and conciliatory, no reliance was ever placed upon their professions of friendship, and no opportunity for the display of their treacherous character was ever afforded, although on one occasion they were

placed by accident in so perilous a position that nothing but a concurrence of favorable circumstances prevented their utter destruction. This was after having collected a very valuable cargo of furs and nearly expended their articles of barter, and when they were seeking a safe place to replenish their supplies of wood and water.

"While steering to the westward with this intention, and going at the rate of about two knots, unsuspicious of danger, the vessel suddenly struck a sunken ledge and stopped. Perceiving that she hung abaft the midships, and that there was three and a half fathoms under the bows, we immediately ran all the guns forward and carried out an anchor ahead; but the tide ebbed so rapidly that all our efforts to heave her off were ineffectual. We therefore heeled her on the side, whence she would be less likely to roll over. At low water the position of the vessel was such as to afford little room to hope that she could escape bilging. She hung by about four feet amidships, having slidden forward as the tide fell, and brought up with the end of her bowsprit on the bottom, while her keel formed an angle of forty-five degrees with the water-line, the sternpost being fourteen or fifteen feet above the rock. This position, combined with a rank heel to starboard, made it impossible to stand on deck. We therefore put a number of loaded muskets into the boat, and prepared to make such resistance in case of attack as could be made by fifteen men crowded into a sixteen-foot boat. Our situation was now one of the most painful anxiety, no less from the prospect of losing our vessel and the rich cargo we had collected with so much toil, than from the apprehension of being discovered in this defenceless state by any one of the hostile tribes by whom we were surrounded. A canoe of the largest class, with thirty warriors well armed, had left us but half an hour before we struck, and were now prevented from seeing us only by having passed round a small island. Should the vessel bilge, there existed scarcely any other chance for the preservation of our lives than the precarious one of falling in with some ship before we were discovered by Indians. That she would bilge if the weather varied in any degree from the perfect calm which then prevailed was almost a certainty. More than ten hours were passed

A CRITICAL SITUATION.

51

in this agonizing state of suspense, watching the horizon to discover if any savages were approaching; the heavens, if there were a cloud that might chance to ruffle the surface of the water; the vessel, whose occasional cracking seemed to warn us of destruction; and when the tide began to flow, impatiently observing its apparently sluggish advance, while I involuntarily consulted my watch, the hands of which seemed to have forgotten to move.

"At length the water, as the tide rose, having flowed over the coamings of the hatches, which had been caulked down in anticipation of this event, without any indication of the vessel's lifting, I was deliberating on the propriety of cutting away the mast, when we perceived that she was beginning to rise. She soon after righted so much that we were able to go on board, and at half-past twelve in the night we had the indescribable pleasure of seeing her afloat again without having received any other apparent injury than the loss of a few sheets of copper.

"To the perfect calm, smooth water, and uncommon strength of our vessel may be attributed our escape from this truly perilous situation.

"I will not attempt to describe the joy I experienced at this escape. You may conceive of it by being reminded that on one side was presented death in its most horrid form, or a still more horrid captivity among the rudest savages; in the other, life, liberty, competence, and a sight of my friends again.

66

'On the 23d we laid the vessel ashore and cut off the rough copper, perceived that the keel was considerably bruised and a piece of the sheathing under the copper broken, but no material injury done. We gave her what repair the time would permit, and hauled off when the tide flowed so as to float her. We continued navigating the Sound till the 29th, when, having collected nineteen hundred skins, besides a good proportion of tails, which is considered a good cargo, I concluded to go to Norfolk Sound again and pick up what we could in the course of forty-eight hours, and thence to the Charlotte Islands, preparatory to taking our departure from the coast."

This plan was carried out, and some three hundred skins added to their store, the supplies of wood and water replenished, and on the 27th

"We put to sea, happy at having so fortunately completed our business, and doubly so at leaving this inhospitable coast. Indeed, the criminal who receives a pardon under the gallows could hardly feel a greater degree of exultation."

His return passage to China via the Sandwich Islands was chiefly remarkable by the pleasant contrast it afforded to the hardships and dangers to which they had so long been exposed. IIe arrived at Wampoa on the 15th of September, and thus describes his meeting with his friends there:

"Several of the gentlemen who had predicted our destruction from attempting the voyage at the season we did, presumed, when they saw the cutter arrive, that we had failed, which indeed they had anticipated, from the arrival in Canton several months before of the mutineers whom we had left on the coast of China, and the sad stories they had told of hardship, danger, and cruel usage.

"One of these gentlemen, on meeting me, was actually beginning to express the commiseration he felt for my hard fortune, but perceiving nothing like dejection in my countenance he stopped to make inquiries, and was astonished to learn that we had accomplished the voyage successfully and had a cargo on board that would probably produce $60,000. A piece of information which I received on my arrival served to show me in glaring colors my own short-sightedness, and almost to make me a convert to the belief that whatever is, is right.'

"I allude to the loss of the ship Ontario. As I had known before arriving at Canton from Batavia that Captain Wheaton was destitute of officers, I had hoped through this means to embark myself and property for America free of expense; but only twenty-four hours before my arrival he had engaged a chief mate, regretting exceedingly that he had not known that I was coming. My own disappointment was very great, as I knew not which way to turn till the offer of the cutter was presented. Had I arrived a few hours earlier in Canton I should have embarked in the Ontario, lost all my property, probably without insurance, and been left destitute in a foreign land."

SUCCESSFUL TERMINATION.

53

The sea-otter skins which he had bought of the Indians at the rate of eight prime skins in exchange for a musket, were sold in Canton for $26 each, and thus the voyage was completed to the satisfaction of all concerned. I cannot better conclude my account of it than by the relation of a pleasant and unexpected recurrence to it in subsequent years.

Not long after the publication of my father's voyages in 1842, he was surprised at receiving by mail a copy of the Peoria, Illinois, Register of July 22, 1842, containing the following:

"YANKEE DARING AND ENTERPRISE.

"Under this head we copied a month ago from the Boston Courier a notice of a new volume of voyages, by Captain Cleveland of Boston. "The article met the eye of an old friend of Captain Cleveland, who in the fulness of his heart has sent us the following letter, with the request that we should put it in editorial form. We prefer, however, to publish it just as he sent it. The writer is the respected postmaster at Andover, in Henry County, and his own life has been little less prolific of adventure than that of his salt-water friend. We knew him twenty-five or thirty years ago as the proprietor of the Tontine Coffee-house in New York, then one of the principal hotels of that city. Like Captain Cleveland, he has counted his dollars by the thousand, and is now, at the turn of Fortune's wheel, content to keep a humble post-office in a town of twenty houses, and to live upon the gains of the Andover grist-mill, which he has recently purchased."

"MR. DAVIS,-In your paper of 24th June is a sketch from Cleveland's Voyages, taken from the Boston Courier. Having myself been something of a traveller, it is pleasing to me to come across a faithful narrative, and such I know this to be from my intimate acquaintance with the writer. Not having heard before of the work, nor of Captain Cleveland for many years, I was greatly interested in the