lossom; they burst into
flame. Great bushes of flaming Poinsetta, as large as American lilac
bushes, burst into flame over night in Manila.

That great tree, as large as an Oak, which they call "The Flame of the
Forest," looks like a tree on fire with flowers. One will roam the world
over and see nothing more beautiful than this great tree which looks
like a massive umbrella of solid flame.

Every flower in the Orient seems to be a crimson flower. The tropical
heat of the Philippines, Java, Borneo, Sumatra, the Malay States and
India's far reaches; with beautiful Ceylon, and Burma; seems to give
birth to crimson child-flowers.

The sunsets burst into bloom, as well as the flowers. There is no region
on earth where sunsets flare into birth and die in a flash-light of
glory and beauty like they do in the regions of the South China Sea. For
months at a stretch, every night, without a break, the most wildly
gorgeous, flaming, flaring, flashing crimson sunsets crown the glory of
the days.

I have been interested in catching pictures of sunsets all over the
world. I have caught hundreds of sunsets with the Graflex; and other
hundreds have I captured with a Corona, just as they occurred; and I
have never seen a spot on earth where the sunsets were such glorious
outbursts of crimson and golden beauty as across the circling shores of
Manila Bay.

Night after night I have sat in that ancient city and watched these
tumultuous, tumbling, Turner-like flashes of color.

One night the sky was flame from sea to zenith across Manila Bay. It was
like a great Flame of the Forest tree in full bloom. Against this sky of
flaming sunset-clouds, hundreds of ships, anchored in the bay, lit their
lesser crimson lights; while, now and then, a battleship which was
signaling to another ship, flashed its message of light against the
fading glow of glory in the crimson sunset.

"It is light talking unto light; flash unto flash; crimson unto
crimson!" said a friend who sat with me looking out across that
beautiful bay.

The picture of that flaming sunset, with the great vessels silhouetted
against it; with the little lights on the ships, running in parallel
rows; and the flashing lights of signals from the masts of the
battleship will never die in one's memory.

It was a quiet, peaceful scene.

But suddenly, like a mighty volcano a burst of flame swept into the air
at the mouth of the Pasig River. It leapt into the sky and lighted up
the