The result of many inquiries shows the profit per head to average not more than one and one-half reals daily.  Further to the south-west from here, on the mountain Malaguit, are seen the ruins of a Spanish mining company; a heap of rubbish, a pit fifty feet deep, a large house fallen to ruin, and a stream-work four feet broad and six feet high.  The mountain consists of gneiss much decomposed, with quartz veins in the stream-work, with the exception of the bands of quartz, which are of almost pure clay earth with sand.

[Edible bird’s nests.] On the sides hung some edible nests of the salangane, but not of the same kind as those found in the caverns on the south coast of Java.  These, which are of much less value than the latter, are only occasionally collected by the Chinese dealers, who reckon them nominally at five cents each.  We also found a few of the nest-building birds (Collocalia troglodytes, Gray). [132]

[Abandoned workings.] Around lay so large a number of workings, and there were so many little abandoned pits, wholly or half fallen to ruin, and more or less grown over, that it was necessary to step between with great caution.  Some of them were still being worked after the mode followed at Longos, but with a few slight improvements.  The pits are twice as large as those excavated there, and the rock is lifted, up by a pulley to a cylindrical framework of bamboo, which is worked by the feet of a lad who sits on a bank higher up.

[Lead and mica.] Ten minutes north of the village of Malaguit is a mountain in which lead-glance and red lead have been obtained; the rock consisting of micaceous gneiss much decomposed.  There is a stream-work over one hundred feet in length.  The rock appears to have been very poor.

The highly prized red-lead ores have been found on the top of this same hill, N. 30 deg.  W. from the village.  The quarry was fallen to ruin and flooded with rain, so that only a shallow hollow in the ground remained visible; and after a long search amongst the bushes growing there a few small fragments were found, on which [Chrome-lead ore.] chrome-lead ore was still clearly to be recognized.  Captain Sabino, the former governor of Paracale, a well-informed Filipino, who, at the suggestion of the alcalde, accompanied me, had for some years caused excavations to be carried on, in order to find specimens for a speculator who had in view the establishment of a new mining company in Spain; but the specimens which were found had not been removed, as speculation in mines in the Philippines had, in the interval, fallen into discredit on the Exchange of Madrid; and as yet only a little box full of sand, out of a few small drusy cavities, has been fixed upon and pounded, to be sold as variegated writing-sand, after being carefully sifted.

[A pretty fan-palm.] A peculiarly beautiful fan-palm grows on this hill.  Its stem is from thirty to forty feet high, cylindrical and dark-brown, with white rings a quarter of an inch broad at distances of four inches, and, at similar intervals, crown-shaped bands of thorns two inches long.  Near the crown-leaf the stem passes into the richest brown of burnt sienna.