Marguerita Bay lies on the Mexican coast about 200 miles north of Cape St. Lucas. On arriving the schooner was “kedged” up the lagoons running parallel with the coast fully one hundred miles. This took two weeks. We passed, as it were, through a succession of mill-ponds, filled with low, green islands, whose dense shubbery extended to the water’s edge. The trunks of a small umbrella-shaped tree were washed by the tides to the height of several feet, and thickly incrusted with small oysters. When we wanted oysters we went on shore and chopped down a boatload of trees. Is it necessary to remark that the trees did not grow the oysters. The oysters grew on the trees, and they were as palatable as so many copper cents, whose taste they resembled. When cooked, the coppery taste departed. The channel through these lagoons was very crooked. It was necessary to stake out a portion at low water, when it ran a mere creek through an expanse of hard sand, sometimes a mile from either shore. At high water all this would be covered to a depth of six or seven feet. The _Henry_ grounded at each ebb, and often keeled over at an angle of forty-five. From our bulwarks it was often possible to jump on dry ground. This keeling-over process, twice repeated every twenty-four hours, was particularly hard on the cook, for the inconvenience resulting from such a forty-five-degree angle of inclination extended to all things within his province. My stove worked badly at the angle of forty-five. The kettle could be but half-filled, and only boiled where the water was shallowest inside. The cabin table could only be set at an angle of forty-five. So that while the guests on the upper side had great difficulty in preventing themselves from slipping off their seats on and over that table, those on the lower side had equal difficulty in keeping themselves up to a convenient feeding distance. Captain Reynolds, at the head of the board, had a hard lot in the endeavor to maintain his dignity and sitting perpendicularly at the same time on the then permanent and not popular angle of forty-five. But I, steward, butler, cook, and cabin boy, bore the hardest tribulation of all in carrying my dishes across the deck, down the cabin stairs, and arranging them on a table at an angle of forty-five. Of course, at this time the rack used in rough weather to prevent plates and platters from slipping off was brought into permanent use. Transit from galley to cabin was accomplished by crawling on two legs and one arm, thus making of myself a peripatetic human triangle, while the unoccupied hand with difficulty bore aloft the soup-tureen. It was then I appreciated the great advantages afforded in certain circumstances by the prehensile caudal termination of our possible remote ancestors. With such a properly equipped appendage, the steward might have taken a close hitch round an eyebolt, and let all the rest of himself and his dishes safely down into the little cabin.