[A suspicious medal.] In the Trabajos y Hechos Nolables de la Soc.  Econom. de los Amigos del Pais, for September 4th, 1823, it is said that “Don Antonio Siguenza paid a visit to the volcano of Albay on March 11th,” and that the Society “ordered a medal to be struck in commemoration of the event, and in honor of the aforesaid Siguenza and his companions.”  Everybody in Albay, however, assured me that the two Scotchmen were the first to reach the top of the mountain.  It is true that in the above notice the ascent of the volcano is not directly mentioned; but the fact of the medal naturally leads us to suppose that nothing less can be referred to.  Arenas, in his memoir, says:  “Mayon was surveyed by Captain Siguenza.  From the crater to the base, which is nearly at the level of the sea, he found that it measured sixteen hundred and eighty-two Spanish feet or four sixty-eight and two-third meters.”  A little further on, he adds, that he had read in the records of the Society that they had had a gold medal struck in honor of Siguenza, who had made some investigations about the volcano’s crater in 1823.  He, therefore, appears to have had some doubt about Siguenza’s actual ascent.

[An early friar attempt.] According to the Franciscan records a couple of monks attempted the ascent in 1592, in order to cure the natives of their superstitious belief about the mountain.  One of them never returned; but the other, although he did not reach the summit, being stopped by three deep abysses, made a hundred converts to Christianity by the mere relation of his adventures.  He died in the same year, in consequence, it is recorded, of the many variations of temperature to which he was exposed in his ascent of the volcano.

[Estimates of height] Some books say that the mountain is of considerable height; but the Estado Geografico of the Franciscans for 1855, where one could scarcely expect to find such a thoughtless repetition of so gross a typographical error, says that the measurements of Siguenza give the mountain a height of sixteen hundred and eighty-two feet.  According to my own barometrical reading, the height of the summit above the level of the sea was twenty-three hundred and seventy-four meters, or eighty-five hundred and fifty-nine Spanish feet.

CHAPTER X

[An accident and a month’s rest.] I sprained my foot so badly in ascending Mayon that I was obliged to keep the house for a month.  Under the circumstances, I was not sorry to find myself settled in a roomy and comfortable dwelling.  My house was built upon the banks of a small stream, and stood in the middle of a garden in which coffee, cacao, oranges, papayas, and bananas grew luxuriantly, in spite of the tall weeds which surrounded them.  Several over-ripe berries had fallen to the ground, and I had them collected, roasted, mixed with an equal quantity of sugar, and made into chocolate; an art in which the natives greatly excel.  With the Spaniards chocolate takes the place of coffee and tea, and even the mestizos and the well-to-do natives drink a great deal of it.