e vessels sailing from Legaspi, even at the most favorable time
of the year, are obliged to go round the eastern peninsula of Luzon,
and meet the principal current of the Straits of San Bernardino,
frequently a very difficult undertaking; and, moreover, small vessels
obliged to anchor there are in great danger of being captured by
pirates. The country about Sorsogon, however, is not so fertile as
the neighborhood of Legaspi.

[A worthy official.] I took letters of introduction with me to both
the Spanish authorities of the province; who received me in the most
amiable way, and were of the greatest use to me during the whole of
my stay in the vicinity. I had also the good fortune to fall in with
a model alcalde, a man of good family and of most charming manners;
in short, a genuine caballero. To show the popular appreciation of
the honesty of his character, it was said of him in Samar that he
had entered the province with nothing but a bundle of papers, and
had left it as lightly equipped.

CHAPTER IX

[Daraga.] My Spanish friends enabled me to rent a house in Daraga,
[72] a well-to-do town of twenty thousand inhabitants at the foot
of the Mayon, a league and a half from Legaspi. The summit of this
volcano was considered inaccessible until two young Scotchmen, Paton
and Stewart by name, demonstrated the contrary. [73] Since then
several natives have ascended the mountain, but no Europeans.

[Ascent of Mayon.] I set out on September 25th, and passed the night,
by the advice of Senor Munos, in a hut one thousand feet above the
level of the sea, in order to begin the ascent the next morning with
unimpaired vigor. But a number of idlers who insisted on following
me, and who kept up a tremendous noise all night, frustrated the
purpose of this friendly advice; and I started about five in the
morning but little refreshed. The fiery glow I had noticed about the
crater disappeared with the dawn. The first few hundred feet of the
ascent were covered with a tall grass quite six feet high; and then
came a slope of a thousand feet or so of short grass succeeded by a
quantity of moss; but even this soon disappeared, and the whole of
the upper part of the mountain proved entirely barren. We reached
the summit about one o'clock. It was covered with fissures which
gave out sulphurous gases and steam in such profusion that we were
obliged to stop our mouths and nostrils with our handkerchiefs to
prevent ourselves from being suffo