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Thick stockings and drawers were darned and patched ; mittens dragged from the bottom of the chest and mended ; comforters made for the neck and ears ; old flannel shirts cut up to line monkey jackets ; southwesters lined with flannel , and a pot of paint smuggled forward to give them a coat on the outside ; and everything turned to hand ; so that , although two years had left us but a scanty wardrobe , yet the economy and invention which necessity teaches a sailor , soon put each of us in pretty good trim for bad weather , even before we had seen the last of the fine . Its great size ; - for it must have been from two to three miles in circumference , and several hundred feet in height ; - its slow motion , as ts base rose and sank in the water , and its high points nodded against the clouds ; the dashing of the waves upon it , which , breaking high with foam , lined its base with a white crust ; and the thundering sound of the cracking of the mass , and the breaking and tumbling down of huge pieces ; together with its nearness and approach , which added a slight element of fear , - all combined to give to it the character of true sublimity . I stood on the forecastle , looking at the seas , which were rolling high , as far as the eye could reach , their tops white with foam , and the body of them of a deep indigo blue , reflecting the bright rays of the sun . She seemed desirous of a trial of speed , and our captain accepted the challenge , although we were loaded down to the bolts of our chain plates , as deep as a sand-barge , and bound so taught with our cargo that we were no more fit for a race than a man in fetters ; - while our antagonist was in her best trim . The main body of the mass was , as I have said , of an indigo color , its base crusted with frozen foam ; and as it grew thin and transparent toward the edges and top , its color shaded off from a deep blue to the whiteness of snow . Our agent , with a tight , black , swallow-tailed coat , just imported from Boston , a high stiff cravat , looking as if he had been pinned and skewered , with only his feet and hands left free , took the floor just after Bandini ; and we thought they had had enough of Yankee grace . The sun was out bright , the sea of a deep blue , fringed with the white foam of the waves which ran high before a strong southwester ; our solitary ship tore on through the water , as though glad to be out of her confinement ; and the ice islands lay scattered upon the ocean here and there , of various sizes and shapes , reflecting the bright rays of the sun , and drifting slowly northward before the gale . Why else a rich man ( sailors call every man rich who does not work with his hands , and wears a long coat and cravat ) should leave a Christian country , and come to such a place as California , to pick up shells and stones , they could not understand . We were not mistaken in the coldness of the weather , for a white frost was on the ground , a thing we had never seen before in California , and one or two little puddles of fresh water were skimmed over with a thin coat of ice . The young man , too , who came out with us from Boston in the Pilgrim , had to be taken from his berth before the mast and made clerk , on account of a fit of rheumatism which attacked him soon after he came upon the coast .