CHAPTER VII


[The Lagoon of Bay.] My second trip took me up the Pasig to the great
Lagoon of Bay. I left Manila at night in a banca, a boat hollowed out
of a tree-trunk, with a vaulted roof made of bamboo and so low that it
was almost impossible to sit upright under it, which posture, indeed,
the banca-builder appeared to have neglected to consider. A bamboo
hurdle placed at the bottom of the boat protects the traveller from
the water and serves him as a couch. Jurien de la Gravière [62]
compares the banca to a cigar-box, in which the traveller is so
tightly packed that he would have little chance of saving his life
if it happened to upset. The crew was composed of four rowers and
a helmsman; their daily pay was five reals apiece, in all nearly
seven pesos, high wages for such lazy fellows in comparison with
the price of provisions, for the rice that a hard-working man ate in
a day seldom cost more than seven centavos (in the provinces often
scarcely six), and the rest of his food (fish and vegetables), only
one centavo. We passed several villages and tiendas on the banks in
which food was exposed for sale. My crew, after trying to interrupt
the journey under all sorts of pretences, left the boat as we came to
a village, saying that they were going to fetch some sails; but they
forgot to return. At last, with the assistance of the night watchman
I succeeded in hauling them out of some of their friends' houses,
where they had concealed themselves. After running aground several
times upon the sandbanks, we entered the land and hill-locked Lagoon
of Bay, and reached Jalajala early in the morning.

[The Pasig.] The Pasig forms a natural canal, about six leagues long,