introducing the south-west
monsoon, which though it extends through the months of July, August,
and September, is not so constant as the north-east. The last-named
three months constitute the dry season, which, however, is often
interrupted by thunderstorms. Not a week, indeed, passes without rain;
and in many years a storm arises every afternoon. At this season of
the year ships can reach the east coast; but during the north-east
monsoon navigation there is impossible. These general circumstances
are subject to many local deviations, particularly on the south and
west coasts, where the uniformity of the air currents is disturbed
by the mountainous islands lying in front of them. According to
the Estado geografico of 1855, an extraordinarily high tide, called
dolo, occurs every year at the change of the monsoon in September or
October. It rises sometimes sixty or seventy feet, and dashes itself
with fearful violence against the south and east coasts, doing great
damage, but not lasting for any length of time. The climate of Samar
and Leyte appears to be very healthy on the coasts; in fact, to be
the best of all the islands of the archipelago. Dysentery, diarrhoea,
and fever occur less frequently than in Luzon, and Europeans also
are less subject to their attacks than in that place.

[Only the coast settled.] The civilized natives live almost solely
on its coasts, and there are also Bisayans who differ in speech and
manners from the Bicols in about the same degree that the latter do
from the Tagalogs. Roads and villages are almost entirely wanting
in the interior, which is covered with a thick wood, and affords
sustenance to independent tribes, who carry on a little tillage
(vegetable roots and mountain rice), and collect the products of the
woods, particularly resin, honey, and wax, in which the island is
very rich.

[A tedious but eventful voyage.] On the 3rd of July we lost sight
of Legaspi, and, detained by frequent calms, crawled as far as
Point Montufar, on the northern edge of Albay, then onwards to the
small island of Viri, and did not reach Lauang before evening of
the 5th. The mountain range of Bacon (the Pocdol of Coello), which
on my previous journeys had been concealed by night or mist, now
revealed itself to us in passing as a conical mountain; and beside
it towered a very precipitous, deeply-cleft mountain-side, apparently
the remnant of a circular range. After the pilot, an old Filipino and
native of