ut, being Americans, they worked with a right good
will, completing the trench late that afternoon. The office was also
established by this time, after which the two shore ends were laid
and buoyed, thus accomplishing a tremendous day's work.

In the early afternoon we women went ashore sight-seeing, and found
Iligan chiefly interesting for what it was not. On paper--Spanish
paper, that is--the town is represented as a city of some magnitude,
boasting handsome barracks for the soldiers, two beautiful churches,
many well-built houses and shops, a railway running from the outskirts
of the town to Lake Lanao, a handsome station for Iligan's terminal
of the line, and many other modern improvements, including fine
waterworks.

In reality, Iligan is a little nipa-shack settlement, some of the nipa
buildings being very pretty, to be sure, but hardly pretentious enough
for city dwellings. As for the railway to Lake Lanao, all that is left
of it are two old engines and some dilapidated cars in a discouraged,
broken down shed on the outskirts of the village, the shed doubtless
representing the handsome station aforementioned. Even the rails of
the road have been carried away by the Moros to be made into _bolos_
and _krises_.

As for the barracks, the natives say that the Spaniards burnt them
down on evacuating in favour of their American foe, while the churches
probably never existed save in imagination, though one place of worship
was in process of construction at the time of our visit, the skeleton
of its framework being covered by a well finished roof, which, by the
way, is a peculiarity of carpentering in these islands. The woodwork
of the structure had a weather-beaten air, which told only too plainly
how long a time had elapsed since its foundation-stone was laid, and
on all sides the houses were deserted and dropping into decay. Board
fences rotted under a pitiless sun, and gardens, overgrown with weeds
and rank vegetation, encroached on the highway, which seemed to hold
the glare of noon in its stifling dust. Degraded, wretched looking
pigs wallowed about under one's very feet, and thin babies scowled
at us fiercely from behind the skirts of their unsmiling mothers.

With the exception of two or three very good little shops, run of
course by the ubiquitous Chinaman, at which one could purchase Moro
turbans, _sarongs_--the long skirt-like garments in which Moro men and
women wrap themselves--_petates_, or sleeping mats