after leaping down a ladder of fifty meters in height from Loquilocun, it steals away in gentle windings through a flat inundated country to the east coast; forming a broad estuary, on the right bank of which, half a league from the sea, the district of Jubasan or Paric (population 2,300) is situated.  The latter give their names to the lower portion of the stream.  Here the excellent fellows of Loquilocun left me in order to begin their very arduous return journey.

[Along the coast.] Owing to bad weather, I could not embark for Tubig (population 2,858), south of Paric, before the following day; and, being continually hindered by difficulties of land transit, I proceeded in the rowboat along the coast to Borongan (population 7,685), with the equally intelligent and obliging priest with whom I remained some days, and then continued my journey to Guiuan (also Guiuang, Guiguan), the most important district in Samar (population 10,781), situated on a small neck of land which projects from the south-east point of the island into the sea.

[A tideland spring.] Close to the shore at the latter place a copious spring bursts out of five or six openings, smelling slightly of sulphuretted hydrogen.  It is covered by the sea during the flow, but is open during the ebb, when its salt taste is hardly perceptible.  In order to test the water, a well was formed by sinking a deep bottomless jar, and from this, after the water had flowed for the space of half an hour, a sample was taken, which, to my regret, was afterwards lost.  The temperature of the water of the spring, at eight o’clock in the forenoon, was 27.7 deg.; of the atmosphere, 28.7 deg.; of the sea-water, 31.2 deg.C.  The spring is used by the women to dye their sarongs.  The materials, after being steeped in the decoction of a bark abounding in tannin (materials made of the abaca are first soaked in a calcareous preparation), and dried in the sun, are placed in the spring during the ebb, taken out during the flow, re-dried, dipped in the decoction of bark, and again, while wet, placed in the spring; and this is repeated for the space of three days; when the result is a durable, but ugly inky black (gallussaures, oxide of iron).

[East Indian monkeys.] At Loquilocun and Borongan I had an opportunity of purchasing two live macaques. [171] These extremely delicate and rare little animals, which belong to the class of semi-apes, are, as I was assured in Luzon and Leyte, to be found only in Samar, and live exclusively on charcoal.  My first “mago” was, in the beginning, somewhat voracious, but he disdained vegetable food, and was particular in his choice of insects, devouring live grasshoppers with delight. [172] It was extremely ludicrous, when he was fed in the day time, to see the animal standing, perched up perpendicularly on his two thin legs with his bare tail, and turning his large head—­round as a ball, and with very large, yellow, owl-like eyes—­in every direction, looking like a dark lantern on a pedestal