s enthroned, two other boys walking ahead
of the procession and two behind, all bearing candles in candelabra
taller than themselves, and all dressed in scarlet and white like
the bearers of the palanquin. It was used as well for a confessional,
and to carry the priest to and from visits of extreme unction.

Guinayangan also boasts a shipyard, which is nothing more than a rough
shed, the implements being most primitive in construction. Without
even ways, not to mention the absence of means, it is said that large
sailing ships are made there, two of them being in the harbour at
the time of our visit.

For several days we hovered in the vicinity of Guinayangan and Pasacao,
cutting and splicing, splicing and cutting, while we idle ones of
the quarter-deck unanimously decided that this lower corner of Luzon
Island comprised the prettiest landscapes we had seen on the trip,
consisting for the main part of wonderful mountains covered with a
luxurious tropical growth of trees and shrubbery, these perpendicular
forests springing out of the water with scarcely any intervention of
beach between their green sides and the sparkling sea beneath them.

In places the mountains were bare of trees, suggesting forest fires
in the past, but in the distant past, as the patches of ground were
covered with grass, the exact tender shade in which the young Spring
clothes herself at home. In many of these rifts between the trees
nipa houses were tucked away, adding to the charm of the landscape,
and the multifarious shades of green to be found on these hillsides
were further diversified by shrub-like trees with a faint red tinge
like furze, and by still others with a silvery sheen to their leaves.

It was while paying this long-laid line into the tanks, when
looking for faults, that wonderful sea growths were brought up on
the cable, especially in comparatively shallow water, revealing
varieties of submarine life undreamed of in our philosophy. There
was white coral, and coral in shades of pink, and red, and violet;
there were sea-cucumbers and jellyfish; shrimp of tiny proportions
and scarlet in colouring; barnacles of every description; curious
shells of fairy-like proportions; seaweeds and grasses and moss of
exquisite delicacy, making the cable look in places as if it were a
rope of tiny many coloured blossoms. The small girl of the _Burnside_
was enchanted with the pretty playthings sent her by the mermaids,
and gathered the gaily tint