who work in pine wood. Of the many branches
of manufacture in which men cut up other
wood than pine, we speak not here.

A DIGGER'S DIARY.
IN OCCASIONAL CHAPTERS.

Monday, May 24th.—Started for the East
India Docks. In the course of half an hour
I found myself standing beneath the lofty
black bowsprit of a great dirty ship, having
a projecting wooden figure overhead of the
upper half of a man in a blue naval coat and
black cocked hat, underneath which, on each
side, was written, on a scroll like a coil of
cable, RODNEYRIG. In order to be quite sure,
I walked to the tail of the vessel; and there,
also, in gold letters on a black ground, I read
The Rodneyrig.

She was a large, and what would be called,
I suppose, a finely-shaped ship, but looking
very dirty. Her sides were being scraped,
and patched, and painted, and pitched. She
lay close along the sides of the quay. Opposite
to her was a long wooden warehouse,
with bales, packages, deal cases of all sizes,
barrels, stone bottles, casks, and goods of
various kinds distributed all over the flooring
to the height of five or six feet, right down
to the end of its great depth. Looking in
more closely, I read on different cases and
bales the words—Kangaroo, John Thomas,
Sangaree; and close in front, yet more
numerously, The Rodneyrig, with "wanted during
the voyage" on some, and "not wanted
during the voyage" on the majority. I began
to be dreadfully afraid they would not find
room in the ship for my goods and articles of
speculation, if all these were already
before me.

I struggled up the ladders of the ship
through a crowd of the same kind as before,
and along the deck until—after being hustled
and jammed a few minutes in the door-way—
I found myself in the cuddy, beneath the
raised section of the hindermost part of the
deck, called the "Poop." It was a small,
narrow, low-roofed place, with a table extending
the whole length, having ridges of an
inch and a half high at its edges, and the same,
like a little tram-road, down the middle.
Three little round tables, a barometer, a
compass-box, a lamp, and a brass bird-cage swung
from the low ceiling. This, with a lattice-work
of blue and pink calico and brass wire
in the upper part of the doors of each of the
cabins on both sides, gave the place very
much the appearance of the inside of a caravan
at a fair, where clock-work figures move along
tables and curiosities hang around; to which
impression the crowd without and within and
the buzz of voices greatly contributed. I
passed round with the rest of the visitors.
Every private cabin had the word "engaged"
on a printed card nailed over the door. I
struggled out of the cuddy, and forced
my way down broad steps, like the ladder
of a show, into the lower deck of the
"intermediate " passengers. It was very dusky
and full of people, all squeezing
backwards and forwards along the narrow way
between rows of little red benches and the
open doors of the cabins. Over nearly
every one of them was nailed a card with
the old word "engaged" in red letters, and
underneath were written the names of
those fortunate individuals who were to
occupy them. The little narrow red benches
were set cross-wise along the full length
of the ship, and very much closer than the
tables in the smallest suburban tea-garden.
By the side of each of them was fixed a sitting
bench, or form, covered with red baize, of the
width of a single plank of eight inches, as the
table was the width of two such planks; and
all their legs were nailed to the floor. Over
the top of each table was a shelf of the same
length, with ridges round the edge, the same
as with the tables, to prevent things from
sliding off. Between the forms, and the
entrance or front of the rows of cabins, there
was on each side a passage way, or lane for
everybody from one end of the ship's length
to the other, the width of which thoroughfare
was just two feet, and no more, for I measured
it. The cabin fronts and partitions were made
of thin deal boards, hastily knocked up, and
not reaching the ceiling above by several
inches—not by nine or ten inches in some
places—which I was informed was for the
sake of ventilation and thorough draught
above. The cabins were nearly all of the
same depth—eight feet, five inches—but
their width varied from two feet ten to five
feet, some of them thus presenting rather an
oblong appearance, while others were a sort
of narrow strip of enclosure, and looked like
unfinished packing-cases. As usual, the alarming
word "engaged" appeared in red letters
on a printed card nailed over each door.
One cabin I went into was headed with
no less than six names of men. It was
five feet ten inches wide, by eight feet and a
half deep—in fact, just wide enough to admit
of two berths being built up on each side of
the partition facing each other, and two more
cross-ways at the end, with a passage of about
eighteen inches between, for the "convenience"
of entrance and exit. It had no scuttle, or
other aperture, besides the door, for light and
air, and was as murky and uninviting as a
closet with six deal coffin-shells in an undertaker's
shop. Yet all "engaged."

Returning hastily, or as hastily as I could
down the other side of the ship, and not
finding the name of Waits anywhere, I was
beginning to feel rather confused, undetermined,
and dissatisfied, when arriving just
abreast of the main-mast, where it goes down
through the body of the vessel, I came upon
a cabin over which was a card with one name
only upon it—Mr. John Arrowsmith. The
door was closed, and there was a padlock
upon it. I looked through the wooden blinds,