men, to the number of ninety-three,
contrived to reach the island, where they remained sixty-nine days,
during which they lived mostly on seal meat and the few stores they
had been able to save from their ship. The island itself is entirely
barren, containing only a few bushes and a sort of dry grass, with
millions of rats--supposed to have bred from rats landed from
shipwrecked vessels. Strict military discipline was preserved by the
officers, and the men as a body behaved remarkably well.

At length, no vessel appearing in sight, four of the sailors
volunteered to row in an open boat to the Sandwich Islands--more than
a thousand miles distant--for the purpose of reporting the wreck of
the ship, and sending relief to those on the island. The boat
departed, reached the reef which surrounds Kauai, an island to the
north-west of Oahu, and was there wrecked, only one of the men
succeeding in reaching the shore. So soon as the intelligence of the
wreck of the 'Saginaw' reached Honolulu, the Government immediately
dispatched a steamer to take the men off the desert island; and hence
the enthusiastic cheers for Honolulu, raised by the rescued officers
and men of the American ship, who are now all on board the 'Moses
Taylor,' on their way back to San Francisco.

I must now describe my new ship. She is called the 'Rolling Moses;'
but with what justice I am as yet unable to say. She certainly looks
singularly top-hampered,--altogether unlike any British ship that I
have ever seen. She measures twice as much in the beam as the 'City of
Melbourne;' is about 2000 tons register; is flat-bottomed, and draws
about fourteen feet of water when laden. She looks like a great big
house afloat, or rather a row of houses more than thirty feet high.
The decks seemed piled one a-top of the other, quite promiscuously.
First there is the dining-saloon, with cabins all round it; above is
the drawing-room, with more cabins; then above that is the hurricane
deck, with numerous deck-houses for the captain and officers; and
then, towering above all, there is the large beam-engine right between
the paddle-boxes. Altogether it looks a very unwieldy affair, and I
would certainly much rather trust myself to such a ship as the 'City
of Melbourne.' It strikes me that in a heavy sea, 'Moses's' hull would
run some risk of parting company with the immense structure above.

The cabin accommodation is, however, greatly superior to that of my
late ship,--ther