Every One Was Anxious To Get A View
Of The New Place.
A chain of high hills, beginning at the point,
(which was on our larboard hand, coming in,) protected the harbor
on the north and west, and ran off into the interior as far as the
eye could reach.
On the other sides, the land was low, and green,
but without trees. The entrance is so narrow as to admit but one
vessel at a time, the current swift, and the channel runs so near to
a low stony point that the ship's sides appeared almost to touch it.
There was no town in sight, but on the smooth sand beach, abreast,
and within a cable's length of which three vessels lay moored,
were four large houses, built of rough boards, and looking like the
great barns in which ice is stored on the borders of the large ponds
near Boston; with piles of hides standing round them, and men in
red shirts and large straw hats, walking in and out of the doors.
These were the hide-houses. Of the vessels: one, a short, clumsy,
little hermaphrodite brig, we recognized as our old acquaintance,
the Loriotte; another, with sharp bows and raking masts, newly painted
and tarred, and glittering in the morning sun, with the blood-red
banner and cross of St. George at her peak, was the handsome Ayacucho.
The third was a large ship, with top-gallant-masts housed, and sails
unbent, and looking as rusty and worn as two years' "hide-droghing" could
make her.
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