CAGAYAN SULU. [chap. 



Lamery is as fertile-looking a spot as one could hope to meet 

 with even amid these isles of perpetual summer. Sloping gradually 

 upwards from the sea, it is backed by a conical volcano of no great 

 size, which appears to be extinct. The ground is highly cultivated, 

 and the sugar-cane — the principal crop — looked wonderfully well 

 at the time of our visit, covering the country with a mantle of the 

 richest green. From here Taal, with its extraordinary lake volcano, 

 is barely an hour distant. From the middle of a mountain-lake 

 fifteen miles long, surrounded by very high hills, and probably 

 itself an extinct crater, this volcano rises to the height of two 

 thousand feet. Eeaching the summit of the island thus curiously 

 formed, the bottom of its crater is seen to be covered by a sheet of 

 water nearly a mile across. The country in the neighbourhood of 

 Lamery seemed thickly inhabited, and we learnt from a half-caste 

 that the combined population of the Taal and Lamery districts w^as as 

 much as 46,000. The latter village is of somewhat peculiar aspect, 

 for though the houses are almost all of the type usually met with 

 in the Philippine Islands — that is to say, of palm-leaf mats with 

 high-pointed roofs — they surround a most solid -looking and in- 

 congruous cathedral, built of stone, and nearly 100 feet in height, 

 which is visible at sea from a distance of ten miles or more. 



Our stay in this beautiful district, whose only drawback seemed 

 to be the existence of cholera, was limited to a few hours only, and 

 on the following day we weighed anchor, and rounding Cape 

 Calavite, ran down the western side of Mindoro into the Sulu Sea. 

 These waters are studded with numerous shoals and small islands, 

 the position of which, owing to the imperfect survey, is in many 

 cases doubtful, and for the first time we had a man at the mast- 

 head on the look-out. From this elevation shoal water is readily 

 detected by the difference in colour, and for many months subse- 

 quently this precaution w^as as regularly observed as the manning 

 of the " crow's nest " in an Arctic vessel. On the 28th March we 

 passed close to Bancoran — a lonely lagoon islet of the San Miguel 

 group — whose lofty trees appeared literally covered with thousands 



