from their calcareous tubes, elegant red, blue, and yellow crowns of
feelers, and, while little fishes of marvellously gorgeous color dart
about in this fairy garden, in their midst luxuriantly grow delicate,
feathered plumulariae.

[Ornamental but useless forts.] Bad weather and the flight 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