[A coral garden.] At a short distance north-west from Catbalogan a most luxuriant garden of corals is to be observed in less than two fathoms, at the ebb.  On a yellow carpet of calcareous polyps and sponges, groups of leather-like stalks, finger-thick, lift themselves up like stems of vegetable growth; their upper ends thickly covered with polyps (Sarcophyton pulmo Esp.), which display their roses of tentacula wide open, and resplendent with the most beautiful varying colors, looking, in fact, like flowers in full bloom.  Very large serpulites extend from their calcareous tubes, elegant red, blue, and yellow crowns of feelers, and, while little fishes of marvellously gorgeous color dart about in this fairy garden, in their midst luxuriantly grow delicate, feathered plumulariae.

[Ornamental but useless forts.] Bad weather and the flight of my servant, who had gambled away some money with which he had been entrusted, at a cock-fight, having detained me some days in the chief town, I proceeded up the bay, which extends southwards from Catbalogan and from west to east as far as Paranas.  Its northern shore consists of ridges of earth, regular and of equal height, extending from north to south, with gentle slopes towards the west, but steep declivities on the east, and terminating abruptly towards the sea.  Nine little villages are situated on this coast between Catbalogan and Paranas.  From the hollows, amidst coco and betel palms, they expand in isolated groups of houses up the gentle western slopes, and, on reaching the summit, terminate in a little castle, which hardly affords protection against the pirates, but generally forms a pretty feature in the landscape.  In front of the southern edge of the bay, and to the south-west, many small islands and wooded rocks are visible, with the mountains of Leyte in the high-ground, constituting an ever-shifting series of views.

[Paranas.] As the men, owing to the sultry heat, the complete calm, and almost cloudless sky, slept quite as much as they rowed, we did not reach Paranas before the afternoon.  It is a clean village, situated on a declivity between twenty and a hundred and fifty feet above the sea.  The sides, which stand perpendicularly in the sea, consist of grey banks of clay receding landwards, and overspread with a layer of fragments of mussels, the intervals between which are filled up with clay, and over the latter is a solid breccia, cemented with lime, composed of similar fragments.  In the clay banks are well-preserved petrifactions, so similar in color, habitat, and aspect to many of those in the German tertiary formations that they might be taken for them.  The breccia also is fossil, probably also tertiary; at all events, the identity of the few species which were recognisable in it—­Cerithium, Pecten, and Venus—­with living species could not be determined. [170]

[A canal through the bog.] On the following morning I proceeded northwards by a small canal, through a stinking bog of rhizophora (mangroves), and then continued my journey on land to Loquilocun, a little village which is situated in the forest.  Half-way we passed through a river, twenty feet broad, flowing east to west, with steep banks rendered accessible by ladders.