caves. Many of these
caves are of great beauty, resembling the interiors of stone churches;
some extend far back into the dark interior of the island, others are
lighted by openings at the top. Many of them are beautifully colored,
and in an accessible region would doubtless be frequently visited by
tourists, while in their isolated location it is possible that they had
never before been visited by white men, unless in the old Spanish days.
It is in these and in similar caves of this region that the natives
obtain the edible birds' nests so highly prized by some, especially the
Chinese. The natives are said to have claims on certain caves, and any
one found stealing nests from another man's cave is supposedly dealt
with as a thief.

[Illustration: BELL-TOWER OF THE CHURCH OUTSIDE OF THE FORT.]

These curious nests are built by swifts (swallows) against the walls of
the dark caves much in the some way as is done by our common chimney
swifts, except that instead of cementing a number of small twigs
together by a kind of sticky secretion or saliva, the entire nest is
made of the sticky substance which dries into a sort of gummy mass. This
substance has but little taste, and why the wealthy Chinese should be
willing to pay such enormous prices ($12 to $15 per pound) for it is
hard to understand.

It is said that the first nest the bird makes in the season brings the
highest price because it is of pure material; this nest having been
taken the bird builds another, but, having a diminished supply of the
secretion, it introduces some foreign matter to help out, and this
foreign matter, of course, makes the nest less valuable as food. A third
nest may succeed the second, but it has still more foreign matter to
still further diminish its value. That the collection of the nests is
attended with considerable danger is evident from the vertical, jagged
walls of rock that must be scaled, either from below or above, to obtain
them.

[Illustration: ISLAND NEAR TAY TAY WHERE EDIBLE BIRDS' NESTS ARE FOUND.]

To those of us who lead busy lives in the centers of what we call
twentieth-century civilization, life in a place so isolated from the
rest of the world as Tay Tay seems impossible. Yet the inhabitants of
this barrio are quite contented and fairly comfortable. They live "the
simple life" indeed. While their resources are exceedingly limited their
needs and desires are correspondingly few. They never suffer from cold
and proba