reoscope. The heavy forests, crowded with gigantic trees,
seem like a mound of bushes thickly bunched. Off to the left rises
a barren ridge, that might have been the spine of some old reptile
of the mezozoic age; and in the center a Plutonic ampitheater--the
council-chamber of the gods--is swept by shadows from the passing
clouds, or glorified for a brief moment by a flood of light.

The boys are then sent out to catch one of the ponies for their father,
who is going to inspect his hemp plantation on the foot-hills. His
progress will at first be rather slow; for he is a great chatterbox,
and if he finds some crony along the road, he will dismount and drink
a glass of _tuba_ with him, or dicker with him over an exchange of
fighting cocks. The birds are then brought out, and the two men squat
down, with the birds in hand, and set them pecking at each other to
display their fine points. But the string of _hombres_, with their
bolos slung about their waists, making for the mountains, reminds the
planter that he must be getting on. His fields are let out to these
fellows, who will pay him a proportion of the hemp which they can
strip. Although the process of preparing hemp is primitive and slow,
the green stalk being stripped by an iron comb, the laboring man
can prepare enough in one day to supply his family with "_sow sow_"
for an entire week. If he would work with any regularity, especially
in the wild hemp-fields, he would soon be "independent," and could
buy the hemp from others, which could be sold at a profit to the
occasional hemp-boats that come into port. The only capital required
is one or two bull-carts and carabaos, a storehouse, and sufficient
rice or money to secure his first invoice of hemp. The men who carry
it in from the mountains, either on their own backs or on carabaos,
sell it for cash or its equivalent in rice at the first store.

On Saturdays, the boys go to the mountains to buy eggs. Their first
stop is the _hacienda_ on the outskirts of the town--a large, cool
_nipa_ house, with broad verandas, situated in a grove of palms. Around
the veranda are the nests of woven baskets where the chickens are
encouraged to lay eggs. Sucking a juicy mango, they proceed upon their
journey through a field of sugar-cane. They stop perhaps at the rude
mill where the brown sugar is prepared and molded in the shells of
cocoanuts. They quench their thirst here with a stick of sugar-cane,
and, peeling the sweet stalk wi