42 
tered and the real tonnage of some vessels, that Captain 
Barclay assured me, his cargo, the last voyage he made to 
England, weighed upwards of 1300 tons. It is only mixed 
ladings, however, that can be stowed to this amount; a cer- 
tain proportion of heavy goods, such as saltpetre, rice, or 
sugar, paying a freight of about £15, with light goods, such 
as cotton, &c. at 50 cubic feet the ton, and yielding a freight 
of £18. He made the last voyage, from Calcutta to the 
Thames and back again, in 12 months. Her freight for the 
voyage was £20,000, and all expenses of repair, wages, &c. 
came to about half that sum. The original cost of building 
her was £40,000, and the materials are of so superior a 
quality, that she will wear well to the age of fifty years. 
All her cables and standing rigging are made of Coire (the 
fibres of the cocoa-nut). Ropes fabricated from this mate- 
rial, with certain preparations, are reckoned much superior to 
those made of hemp. The strands are dipped in a compo- 
sition of tar and fish-oil, and deprived of all the superfluous 
stuff by means of a machine before they are twisted together. 
This preparation renders them indestructible either by fresh 
or salt water. Coire cables are so buoyant as to float in - 
water, which saves them from wearing against the bottom in 
foul ground. 
* Our voyage was pleasant, but unreasonably tedious, 
owing to baffling winds and long protracted calms. Our 
chief amusement on the passage was the usual one of catch- 
ing sharks and bonitos. We killed a great number of the 
former, and among the rest, a blue shark (Squalus glaucus) 
10 feet long, with a couple of sucking fishes sticking to its 
side. On opening its stomach we found nothing in it but 
two or three small fishes of the genus Tetrodon, and a tin 
porringer half full of burgou, that had dropped overboard 
in the morning. The shark is usually surrounded by a 
group of Pilot-fishes, which play about it in the same man- 
ner as a flock of small birds are sometimes seen playing 
round an owl. "The attachment that prompts animals of 
such opposite natures to associate with each other is gener- 
ally believed to be reciprocal. It appears to me, however, 
