ould have little chance of saving his life
if it happened to upset. The crew was composed of four rowers and
a helmsman; their daily pay was five reals apiece, in all nearly
seven pesos, high wages for such lazy fellows in comparison with
the price of provisions, for the rice that a hard-working man ate in
a day seldom cost more than seven centavos (in the provinces often
scarcely six), and the rest of his food (fish and vegetables), only
one centavo. We passed several villages and tiendas on the banks in
which food was exposed for sale. My crew, after trying to interrupt
the journey under all sorts of pretences, left the boat as we came to
a village, saying that they were going to fetch some sails; but they
forgot to return. At last, with the assistance of the night watchman
I succeeded in hauling them out of some of their friends' houses,
where they had concealed themselves. After running aground several
times upon the sandbanks, we entered the land and hill-locked Lagoon
of Bay, and reached Jalajala early in the morning.

[The Pasig.] The Pasig forms a natural canal, about six leagues long,
between the Bay of Manila and the Lagoon of Bay, a fresh water lake,
thirty-five leagues in circumference, that washes the shores of three
fertile provinces, Manila, Laguna and Cavite. Formerly large vessels
full of cargo used to be able to sail right up to the borders of the
lake; now they are prevented by sandbanks. Even flat-bottomed boats
frequently run aground on the Napindan and Taguig banks. [63] Were
the banks removed, and the stone bridge joining Manila to Binondo
replaced by a swing bridge, or a canal made round it, the coasting
vessels would be able to ship the produce of the lagoon provinces
at the very foot of the fields in which they grow. The traffic would
be very profitable, the waters would shrink, and the shallows along
the shore might be turned into rice and sugar fields. A scheme of
this kind was approved more than thirty years ago in Madrid, but it
was never carried into execution. The sanding up of the river has,
on the contrary, been increased by a quantity of fish reels, the
erection of which has been favored by the Colonial Waterways Board
because it reaped a small tax from them.

[A famous plantation.] Jalajala, an estate which occupies the eastern
of the two peninsulas which run southward into the lake, is one of
the first places visited by strangers. It owes this preference to
its beautiful position a