We had been out about six weeks, when we sighted a ship, many miles off, going the same way as ourselves, and the captain determined to board her, and endeavor to get some of the articles of which we were so much in need. There was great excitement among the passengers; all wanted to accompany the captain in his boat, but, to avoid making invidious distinctions, he refused to take any one unless he would pull an oar. I was one of four who volunteered to do so, and we left the ship amid clamorous injunctions not to forget sugar, beef, molasses, vinegar, and so on--whatever each man most longed for. We had four or five Frenchmen on board, who earnestly entreated me to get them even one bottle of oil. We had a long pull, as the stranger was in no hurry to heave-to for us; and on coming up to her, we found her to be a Scotch barque, bound also for San Francisco, without passengers, but very nearly as badly off as ourselves. She could not spare us anything at all, but the captain gave us an invitation to dinner, which we accepted with the greatest pleasure. It was Sunday, and so the dinner was of course the best they could get up. It only consisted of fresh pork (the remains of their last pig), and duff; but with mustard to the pork, and sugar to the duff, it seemed to us a most sumptuous banquet; and, not having the immediate prospect of such another for some time to come, we made the most of the present opportunity. In fact, we cleared the table. I don’t know what the Scotch skipper thought of us, but if he really could have spared us anything, the ravenous way in which we demolished his dinner would surely have softened his heart. On arriving again alongside our own ship, with the boat empty as when we left her, we were greeted by a row of very long faces looking down on us over the side; not a word was said, because they had watched us with the glass leaving the other vessel, and had seen that nothing was handed into the boat; and when we described the splendid dinner we had just eaten, the faces lengthened so much, and assumed such a very wistful expression, that it seemed a wanton piece of cruelty to have mentioned the circumstance at all. But, after all, our hard fare did not cause us much distress: we got used to it, and besides, a passage to California was not like a passage to any other place. Every one was so confident of acquiring an immense fortune there in an incredibly short time, that he was already making his plans for the future enjoyment of it, and present difficulties and hardships were not sufficiently appreciated.