ht of my
servant, who had gambled away some money with which he had been
entrusted, at a cock-fight, having detained me some days in the
chief town, I proceeded up the bay, which extends southwards from
Catbalogan and from west to east as far as Paranas. Its northern
shore consists of ridges of earth, regular and of equal height,
extending from north to south, with gentle slopes towards the west,
but steep declivities on the east, and terminating abruptly towards
the sea. Nine little villages are situated on this coast between
Catbalogan and Paranas. From the hollows, amidst coco and betel
palms, they expand in isolated groups of houses up the gentle western
slopes, and, on reaching the summit, terminate in a little castle,
which hardly affords protection against the pirates, but generally
forms a pretty feature in the landscape. In front of the southern
edge of the bay, and to the south-west, many small islands and wooded
rocks are visible, with the mountains of Leyte in the high-ground,
constituting an ever-shifting series of views.

[Paranas.] As the men, owing to the sultry heat, the complete calm,
and almost cloudless sky, slept quite as much as they rowed, we
did not reach Paranas before the afternoon. It is a clean village,
situated on a declivity between twenty and a hundred and fifty feet
above the sea. The sides, which stand perpendicularly in the sea,
consist of grey banks of clay receding landwards, and overspread
with a layer of fragments of mussels, the intervals between which
are filled up with clay, and over the latter is a solid breccia,
cemented with lime, composed of similar fragments. In the clay banks
are well-preserved petrifactions, so similar in color, habitat, and
aspect to many of those in the German tertiary formations that they
might be taken for them. The breccia also is fossil, probably also
tertiary; at all events, the identity of the few species which were
recognisable in it--Cerithium, Pecten, and Venus--with living species
could not be determined. [170]

[A canal through the bog.] On the following morning I proceeded
northwards by a small canal, through a stinking bog of rhizophora
(mangroves), and then continued my journey on land to Loquilocun,
a little village which is situated in the forest. Half-way we passed
through a river, twenty feet broad, flowing east to west, with steep
banks rendered accessible by ladders.

[Hammock-travelling.] As I still continued lame (wounds in the