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Take into account, moreover, the enterprises which are directly destroyed, root and branch, by revolutionary executions, enforced against the manufacturers and traders of Lyons, Marseilles and Bordeaux, proscribed in a mass, guillotined, imprisoned, or put to flight, their factories stopped, their storehouses put under sequestration, with their stocks of brandy, soap, silk, muslins, leather, paper, serges, cloth, canvas, cordage and the rest; the same at Nantes under Carrier, at Strasbourg under Saint-Just, and everywhere else.

Almost any one can lash a rope more or less satisfactorily, but a knowledge of how to do this properly and in the manner best suited to each case is of great importance to seamen and others having occasion to handle ropes, rigging, or in fact any cordage.

The branches of the mangroves, rooted at their tops, barred up the path, and vines laced them together. "If they be spies," thought I, "I have taken the worst plan to catch them. I may as well go through now. I cannot be distant from the rear of the camp. Ugh! how dismal!" I pushed on, climbing over fallen trunks, and twining myself through the viny cordage.

She was a large two-masted schooner, of foreign rig, and lay perhaps a hundred and eighty or two hundred yards from the shore. Every spar and rope and writhing piece of cordage showed up hard and clear under the livid light which sputtered and flickered from the highest portion of the forecastle.

In this effort, however, the lads had the free use of their paddles; but as in actual service the paddle may easily get entangled with straps and fishing cordage, a special exercise is arranged to prepare the hunter against such misfortunes.

For ourselves, we perceived no effect any more then a quickening of the pulse. At 10,000 feet above the ground we set a little green-finch at liberty. He flew out at once, but immediately returning, settled upon our cordage; afterwards, setting out again, he flew to the earth, describing a very tortuous line in his passage. We followed him with our eyes till he was lost in the clouds.

To organize new crews, to navigate ships destitute of sails, cordage, provisions, and stores, to secure them in port without anchors and cables, except so far as I could supply these essentials by accidental means, were difficulties sufficiently harassing; but to live amongst officers and men discontented and mutinous on account of arrears of pay and other numerous privations, to be compelled to incur the responsibility of seizing by force from Peru funds for their payment, in order to prevent worse consequences to Chili, and then to be exposed to the reproach of one party for such seizure, and the suspicions of another that the sums were not duly applied, are all circumstances so disagreeable and so disgusting that, until I have certain proof that the present ministers are disposed to act in another manner, I cannot possibly consent to renew my services where, under such circumstances, they would be wholly unavailing to the true interests of the people."

Before taking up the matter of knots and splices in detail it may be well to give attention to cordage in general. Cordage, in its broadest sense, includes all forms and kinds of rope, string, twine, cable, etc., formed of braided or twisted strands.

At the same time, in answer to the several petitions produced on that side, I showed one subscribed by the women of several persons of quality, humbly setting forth, "that, since the introduction of this mode, their respective ladies had, instead of bestowing on them their cast gowns, cut them into shreds, and mixed them with the cordage and buckram, to complete the stiffening of their under petticoats."

"The royal magazines are in the parade; in them are deposited and kept all the munitions and supplies, cordage, iron, copper, lead, artillery, arquebuses, and other things belonging to the royal treasury, with their special officials and workmen, who are under the command of the royal officers.