not to mention some small hogs, two sheep, an ox, and a goat to
feed the passengers who were too dainty for sea provender. The
friar was an interesting character. A great pity that the worthy
mate of the Lydia should not have been more explicit! It
intrigues the reader of his manuscript diary to be told that "the
Friar was praying night and day but it would not bring a fair
wind. His behavior was so bad that we were forced to send him to
Coventry, or in other words, no one would speak to him."

The Spanish governors of Guam had in operation an economic system
which compelled the admiration of this thrifty Yankee mate. The
natives wore very few clothes, he concluded, because the Governor
was the only shopkeeper and he insisted on a profit of at least
eight hundred per cent. There was a native militia regiment of a
thousand men who were paid ten dollars a year. With this cash
they bought Bengal goods, cottons, Chinese pans, pots, knives,
and hoes at the Governor's store, so that "all this money never
left the Governor's hands. It was fetched to him by the galleons
in passing, and when he was relieved he carried it with him to
Manila, often to the amount of eighty or ninety thousand
dollars." A glimpse of high finance without a flaw!

There is pathos, simple and moving, in the stories of shipwreck
and stranding on hostile or desert coasts. These disasters were
far more frequent then than now, because navigation was partly
guesswork and ships were very small. Among these tragedies was
that of the Commerce, bound from Boston to Bombay in 1793. The
captain lost his bearings and thought he was off Malabar when the
ship piled up on the beach in the night. The nearest port was
Muscat and the crew took to the boats in the hope of reaching it.