serious hurt, but the maid, whom terror caused to jump
out of the window also, died of the injuries she received. The robbers,
who turned out to be miners and residents in Angat, were easily caught,
and, when I was there, had already spent a couple of years in prison
awaiting their trial.

[A negrito family.] I met a negrito family here who had friendly
relations with the people in the iron-works, and were in the habit
of exchanging the produce of the forest with them for provisions. The
father of this family accompanied me on a hunting expedition. He was
armed with a bow and a couple of arrows. The arrows had spear-shaped
iron points a couple of inches long; one of them had been dipped
into arrow-poison, a mixture that looked like black tar. The women
had guitars (tabaua) similar to those used by the Mintras in the
Malay peninsula. They were made of pieces of bamboo a foot long,
to which strings of split chair-cane were fastened. [61]

[Unwelcome hospitality.] Upon my return, to avoid spending the night
at the wretched convento where I had left my servant with my luggage,
I took the advice of my friends at the iron-works and started late,
in order to arrive at the priest's after ten o'clock at night; for
I knew that the padre shut up his house at ten, and that I could
therefore sleep, without offending him, beneath the roof of a wealthy
mestizo, an acquaintance of theirs. About half-past ten I reached
the latter's house, and sat down to table with the merry women of
the family, who were just having their supper. Suddenly my friend the
parson made his appearance from an inner room, where with a couple of
Augustinian friars, he had been playing cards with the master of the
house. He immediately began to compliment me upon my good fortune,
"for had you been but one minute later," said he, "you certainly
wouldn't have got into the convento."

CHAPTER VII

[The Lagoon of Bay.] My second trip took me up the Pasig to the great
Lagoon of Bay. I left Manila at night in a banca, a boat hollowed out
of a tree-trunk, with a vaulted roof made of bamboo and so low that it
was almost impossible to sit upright under it, which posture, indeed,
the banca-builder appeared to have neglected to consider. A bamboo
hurdle placed at the bottom of the boat protects the traveller from
the water and serves him as a couch. Jurien de la Graviere [62]
compares the banca to a cigar-box, in which the traveller is so
tightly packed that he w