ank; and about eight o'clock we found ourselves opposite the
visita Tragbucan. The river at this place was already six feet deep,
and there was not a boat. After shouting entreaties and threats for
a long time, the people, who were startled out of sleep by a revolver
shot, agreed to construct a raft of bamboo, on which they put us and
our baggage. The little place, which consists of only a few poor huts,
is prettily situated, surrounded as it is by wooded hillocks on a
plateau of sand fifty feet above the reed-bordered river.

[On the Calbayot River.] Thanks to the activity of the teniente of
Catarman who accompanied me, a boat was procured without delay, so
that we were able to continue our journey about seven o'clock. The
banks were from twenty to forty feet high; and, with the exception of
the cry of some rhinoceros birds which fluttered from bough to bough
on the tops of the trees, we neither heard nor saw a trace of animal
life. About half-past eleven we reached Taibago, a small visita,
and about half-past one a similar one, Magubay; and after two hours'
rest at noon, about five o'clock, we got into a current down which
we skilfully floated, almost without admitting any water. The river,
which up to this point is thirty feet broad, and on account of many
projecting branches of trees difficult to navigate, here is twice as
broad. About eleven at night we reached the sea, and in a complete
calm rowed for the distance of a league along the coast to Calbayot,
the convent at which place affords a commanding view of the islands
lying before it.

A thunderstorm obliged us to postpone the journey to the chief town,
Catbalogan (or Catbalonga), which was seven leagues distant, until
the afternoon. In a long boat, formed out of the stem of one tree,
and furnished with outriggers, we travelled along the shore, which
is margined by a row of low-wooded hills with many small visitas;
and as night was setting in we rounded the point of Napalisan,
a rock of trachytic conglomerate shaped by perpendicular fissures
with rounded edges into a series of projections like towers,
which rises up out of the sea to the height of sixty feet, like
a knight's castle. [Catbalogan.] At night we reached Catbalogan,
the chief town of the island, with a population of six thousand,
which is picturesquely situated in the middle of the western border,
in a little bay surrounded by islands and necks of land, difficult
to approach and, therefore, little