in the interior, which is covered with a thick wood, and affords
sustenance to independent tribes, who carry on a little tillage
(vegetable roots and mountain rice), and collect the products of the
woods, particularly resin, honey, and wax, in which the island is
very rich.

[A tedious but eventful voyage.] On the 3rd of July we lost sight
of Legaspi, and, detained by frequent calms, crawled as far as
Point Montufar, on the northern edge of Albay, then onwards to the
small island of Viri, and did not reach Lauang before evening of
the 5th. The mountain range of Bacon (the Pocdol of Coello), which
on my previous journeys had been concealed by night or mist, now
revealed itself to us in passing as a conical mountain; and beside
it towered a very precipitous, deeply-cleft mountain-side, apparently
the remnant of a circular range. After the pilot, an old Filipino and
native of the country, who had made the journey frequently before,
had conducted us, to begin with, to a wrong port, he ran the vessel
fast on to the bar, although there was sufficient water to sail into
the harbor conveniently.

[Lauang.] The district of Lauang (Lahuan), which is encumbered with
more than four thousand five hundred inhabitants, is situated at an
altitude of forty feet, on the south-west shore of the small island
of the same name, which is separated from Samar by an arm of the
Catubig. According to a widely-spread tradition, the settlement was
originally in Samar itself, in the middle of the rice-fields, which
continue to the present day in that place, until the repeated inroads
of sea-pirates drove the inhabitants, in spite of the inconvenience
attending it, to protect themselves by settling on the south coast
of the little island, which rises steeply out of the sea. [163] The