heaped on clouds, outlined in thin threads of gold, and drawing,
in broad shafts of smoky flame, the vapors of an opal sea. At that
time I had not seen the famous Inland Sea of Japan, but I have since
passed through it twice, and feel that in beauty the Strait of San
Bernardino has little to yield to her far-famed neighbor.

Next day we crept up the coast of Batangas, and when I came on deck the
second morning they told me that the island on our left was Corregidor,
and that Manila was three hours' sail ahead. It was of no use going
into a trance and coming up in imagination with Dewey, because he
did not come our way. The entrance to Manila Bay is rather narrow,
and Corregidor lies a little to one side in it like a stone blocking
a doorway. The passage on the left entering the bay is called Boca
Chica, or Little Mouth; that to the right is called Boca Grande, or
Big Mouth. Dewey entered by the Boca Chica, and we were in Boca Grande.

By and by a cluster of roofs, church towers, docks, and arsenals
took form against the sea. A little later we could discern the hulks
of the Spanish fleet scattered in the water, and several of our own
fighting craft at anchor. This was Cavite. There, too, around a great
curve of eight or nine miles, lay Manila, a mass of towers, domes,
and white-painted iron roofs peeping out of green. Behind loomed
the background of mountains, without which no Filipino landscape is
ever complete.

By eleven o'clock we had dropped anchor and the long voyage was
over. Counting our ten days in Honolulu, we lacked but three of the
forty days and forty nights in which the Lord fasted in the wilds. It
would be injustice to the _Buford's_ well-filled larder, however,
to intimate that we fasted. Our food was good, barring the ice cream,