The last part of our day’s journey was performed very cautiously.  A messenger who had been sent on had placed boats at all the mouths of rivers, and, as hardly any other Europeans besides ecclesiastics are known in this district, I was taken in the darkness for a Capuchin in travelling attire; the men lighting me with torches during the passage, and the women pressing forward to kiss my hand.  I passed the night on the road, and on the following day reached Catarman (Caladman on Coello’s map), a clean, spacious locality numbering 6,358 souls, at the mouth of the river of the same name.  Six pontins from Catbalogan awaited their cargoes of rice for Albay.  The inhabitants of the north coast are too indifferent sailors to export their products themselves, and leave it to the people of [Catbalogan monopoly of interisland traffic.] Catbalogan, who, having no rice-fields, are obliged to find employment for their activity in other places.

[A changed river and a new town.] The river Catarman formerly emptied further to the east, and was much choked with mud.  In the year 1851, after a continuous heavy rain, it worked for itself, in the loose soil which consists of quartz sand and fragments of mussels, a new and shorter passage to the sea—­the present harbor, in which ships of two hundred tons can load close to the land; but in doing so it destroyed the greater part of the village, as well as the stone church and the priest’s residence.  In the new convent there are two salons, one 16.2 by 8.8, the other 9 by 7.6 paces in dimensions, boarded with planks from a single branch of a dipterocarpus (guiso).  The pace is equivalent to 30 inches; and, assuming the thickness of the boards, inclusive of waste, to be one inch, this would give a solid block of wood as high as a table (two and one-half feet), the same in breadth, eighteen feet in length, and of about one hundred and ten cubic feet. [166] The houses are enclosed in gardens; but some of them only by fencing, within which weeds luxuriate.  At the rebuilding of the village, after the great flood of water, the laying out of gardens was commanded; but the industry which is required to preserve them is often wanting.  Pasture grounds extend themselves, on the south side of the village, covered with fine short grass; but, with the exception of some oxen and sheep belonging to the priest, there are no cattle.

[Up the river.] Still without servants, I proceeded with my baggage in two small boats up the river, on both sides of which rice-fields and coco-groves extended; but the latter, being concealed by a thick border of Nipa palms and lofty cane, are only visible occasionally through the gaps.  The sandy banks, at first flat, became gradually steeper, and the rock soon showed itself close at hand, with firm banks of sandy clay containing occasional traces of indistinguishable petrifactions.  A small mussel [167] has pierced the clay banks at the water-line, in such number that they look like