The following day, the wind still being unfavorable and precluding our departure, the officers in charge of the expedition began to feel alarmed as to the insufficiency of their funds--the whole amount of money brought being ten pounds, or fifty dollars; this amount would not go very far towards the support of thirteen men, for any length of time, in a place where all the necessaries of life were held at an exorbitant price. Now that their suspicions had worn off as to our true character, I do not think that they would have allowed us to want; still, we did not feel inclined to depend on their charity, so we asked them if there was any work that we could perform. The only branches of business open were wood-chopping and supplying the community with fresh fish; they possessing no boats, and the snapper banks being some distance from the settlement, it is only by chance that they are enabled to indulge their appetites for them. We, on this information, held a consultation, and one party, including the two officers, shouldered axes and went into the woods, where they gave the colonials a specimen of Yankee wood-chopping; the rest of us took the boats, and, having been supplied with tackle, made their hearts glad by a display of fish superior to any they had seen for a long time. This was a pretty specimen of occupation for gentlemen’s sons to engage in; but it only verifies our national peculiarities: and the originator of the remark that a Yankee, with or without his jack-knife, could make a living anywhere, was not far from the truth. The natives here, as elsewhere, are the same miserable, debased race; but are ruled by an iron hand--the early experience of the colonists forcing them to adopt severe measures to secure them against the depredations of these nomadic tribes. I was informed that little account was taken of the death of one of them, by a white man’s agency, if detected in any little peccadillo; but a few years since the whites were still more severe, shooting the natives down like dogs whenever they approached their habitations.