We continued at work in this manner until the lower hold was filled to within four feet of the beams, when all hands were called aboard to begin steeving. As this is a peculiar operation, it will require a minute description. Before stowing the hides, as I have said, the ballast is levelled off, just above the keelson, and then loose dunnage is placed upon it, on which the hides rest. The greatest care is used in stowing, to make the ship hold as many hides as possible. It is no mean art, and a man skilled in it is an important character in California. Many a dispute have I heard raging high between professed ``beach-combers,'' as to whether the hides should be stowed ``shingling,'' or ``back-to-back and flipper-to-flipper''; upon which point there was an entire and bitter division of sentiment among the savans. We adopted each method at different periods of the stowing, and parties ran high in the forecastle, some siding with ``old Bill'' in favor of the former, and others scouting him and relying upon ``English Bob'' of the Ayacucho, who had been eight years in California, and was willing to risk his life and limb for the latter method. At length a compromise was effected, and a middle course of shifting the ends and backs at every lay was adopted, which worked well, and which each party granted was better than that of the other, though inferior to its own. Having filled the ship up, in this way, to within four feet of her beams, the process of steeving began, by which a hundred hides are got into a place where scarce one could be forced by hand, and which presses the hides to the utmost, sometimes starting the beams of the ship,-- resembling in its effects the jack-screws which are used in stowing cotton. Each morning we went ashore, and beat and brought off as many hides as we could steeve in a day, and, after breakfast, went down into the hold, where we remained at work until night, except a short spell for dinner. The length of the hold, from stem to stern, was floored off level; and we began with raising a pile in the after part, hard against the bulkhead of the run, and filling it up to the beams, crowding in as many as we could by hand and pushing in with oars, when a large ``book'' was made of from twenty-five to fifty hides, doubled at the backs, and placed one within another, so as to leave but one outside hide for the book. An opening was then made between two hides in the pile, and the back of the outside hide of the book inserted. Above and below this book were placed smooth strips of wood, well greased, called ``ways,'' to facilitate the sliding in of the book. Two long, heavy spars, called steeves, made of the strongest wood, and sharpened off like a wedge at one end, were placed with their wedge ends into the inside of the hide which was the centre of the book, and to the other end of each straps were fitted, into which large tackles[1] were hooked, composed each of