the water.

On this particular voyage, the hold of the brig, as I have
already stated, was filled with lumber; and thirty-five thousand
feet of the same article were carried on deck, together with an
indefinite quantity of staves, shooks, hoop poles, and other
articles of commerce too numerous to mention. On this enormous
deck-load were constructed, on each side, a row of sheep-pens,
sufficiently spacious to furnish with comfortable quarters some
sixty or seventy sheep; and on the pens, ranged along in
beautiful confusion, was an imposing display of hen-coops and
turkey-coops, the interstices being ingeniously filled with
bundles of hay and chunks of firewood. The quarter-deck was
"lumbered up" with hogsheads of water, and casks of oats and
barley, and hen-coops without number.

With such a deck-load, not an unusually large one in those days,
the leading trucks attached to the fore-rigging were about half
way between the main deck and the foretop. It was a work of
difficulty and danger to descend from the deck-load to the
forecastle; but to reach the foretop required only a hop, skip,
and a jump. The locomotive qualities of this craft, misnamed the
Dolphin, were little superior to those of a well constructed
raft; and with a fresh breeze on the quarter, in spite of the
skill of the best helmsman, her wake was as crooked as that of
the "wounded snake," referred to by the poet, which "dragged its
slow length along."

It was in the early part of July, in the year 1809, that the brig
Dolphin left Portsmouth, bound on a voyage to Dutch Guiana, which