This item of information was imparted to us by a most extraordinary individual, a genuine South-Sea vagabond, who came alongside of us in a whale-boat as soon as we entered the bay, and, by the aid of some benevolent persons at the gangway, was assisted on board, for our visitor was in that interesting stage of intoxication when a man is amiable and helpless.
As we slowly advanced up the bay, numerous canoes pushed off from the surrounding shores, and we were soon in the midst of quite a flotilla of them, their savage occupants struggling to get aboard of us, and jostling one another in their ineffectual attempts.
In addition to the sails they had gotten out long sweeps, and the bay was being ploughed in every direction by the fleeing junks.
The exchange was made, and the salmon boat got up its spritsail and headed down the bay toward the marshes off San Rafael.
Shortly after Captain Bonneville's ineffectual attempt to participate in the trade of the associated camp, the supplies of the Hudson's
Bay Company arrived; and the resident trader was enabled to monopolize the market.
But the bay was as good as Frome's word, and we pushed on to the Junction through the wild white scene.
The small ray of Frome's lantern was soon lost in this smothering medium, in which even his sense of direction, and the bay's homing instinct, finally ceased to serve us.
“I’ve often heard of that Bay of State,” said Benjamin, “but can’t say that I’ve ever been in it, nor do I know exactly whereaway it is that it lays; but I suppose there is good anchorage in it, and that it’s no bad place for the taking of ling; but for size it can’t be so much as a yawl to a sloop of war compared with the Bay of Biscay, or, mayhap, Torbay.
I say, good woman, do they grow many monkeys along the shores of that Bay of State?”
Some ten years ago he had led his people--a scratch lot of wandering Bugis--to the conquest of the
bay, and now in his august care they had forgotten all the past, and had lost all concern for the future.
Up the
bay and into the River Tamar we motored through a solitude as unbroken as that which rested upon the waters of the Channel.
When the ship had sailed safely into the
bay where it could not be seen from the open sea, the Doctor said he would get off on to the island to look for water--because there was none left to drink on his ship.