FREIGHT-BUSINESS — BARQUE IOWA. 347 



her companion. In case she stows it down, one-half 

 of the barrels are branded with the other vessel's 

 name, and credited to her account. In the present 

 case. Captain Perkins of the Plover wishing to make 

 through us a consignment to the owners, we took 

 the whale, and a boat's crew of his assisted us to 

 cut in. After trying out, one-half the oil, amounting 

 to forty-six barrels, was stowed between decks in 

 casks brought from his ship for the purpose and duly 

 branded. We engaged to carry it home as freight, 

 charging six cents per gallon for the carriage. We 

 had also twelve hundred pounds of right whalebone 

 on freight, from the ship Martha, of Fairhaven. 

 This freight-business pays no one but the owners, 

 and perhaps the captain : the proportion of it that 

 any one else gets being so small as to make it a 

 trifling object. 



On the same day that we stowed, we gammoned 

 the barque Iowa, of Fairhaven. She had been very 

 successful, having filled up with humpbacked oil at 

 the Rosemary Islands. She was but a short time 

 from Mauritius, and brought us the sad news of the 

 demise of John Cunningham, of New Bedford, whom 

 we had left at the hospital in Mauritius. The cause 

 of his death was to some degree enveloped in mys- 

 tery. It appears that on the day previous to his 

 decease he applied to the resident phj^sician of the 

 hospital for a discharge, stating as his reason for it 

 the many deaths that were daily occurring in the 

 same ward in which he was (the dysentery having 

 assumed a fatal type just after our leaving the port). 

 The physician told him that he was loath to dis- 

 charge him as yet, for his stricture was not entirely 



