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The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes by Rudolf Ludwig Carl Virchow;Chas. Wilkes;Fedor Jagor;Tomás de Comyn
page 126 of 732 (17%)
I found its waters so greatly fallen that they had left a circular
belt of shore extending all around the lake, in most places nearly a
hundred feet broad. The withdrawal of the waters had compressed the
tangled seaweed into a kind of matting, which, bleached by the sun,
and nearly an inch thick, covered the whole of the shore, and hung
suspended over the stunted bushes which, on my first visit, had
been under water. I have never either seen elsewhere, or heard any
one mention, a similar phenomenon. This stuff, which could be had
for nothing, was excellent for rifle-stoppers and for the stuffing
of birds, so I took a great quantity of it with me. This time the
bird-hunting went well, too.

The native priest of Batu was full of complaints about his
parishioners, who gave him no opportunities of gaining an honest
penny. "I am never asked for a mass, sir; in fact, this is such a
miserable hole that it is shunned by Death itself. In D., where I was
for a long time coadjutor, we had our couple of burials regularly
every day at three dollars a head, and as many masses at a dollar
apiece as we had time to say, besides christenings and weddings,
which always brought a little more grist to the mill. But here
nothing takes place, and I scarcely make anything." This stagnant
state of things had induced him to turn his attention to commerce. The
average native priest, of those I saw, could hardly be called a credit
to his profession. Generally ignorant, often dissipated, and only
superficially acquainted with his duties, the greater part of his
time was given over to gambling, drinking, and other objectionable
amusements. Little care was taken to preserve a properly decorous
behavior, except when officiating in the church, when they read with
an absurd assumption of dignity, without understanding a single
word. The conventos are often full of girls and children, all of
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