74 THE SULU ISLANDS. [chap. 



and twenty-live corpses laid out side by side. It is the custom to 

 keep the dead imburied for five or six days, and the consequences 

 in a climate such as these islands possess is better imagined than 

 described. The account was given us by our informant with a 

 minuteness of detail that rendered it perfectly horrible. It would 

 seem that liere, as elsewhere in the Malay Arcliipelago, Europeans 

 are but rarely attacked by the disease. 



Both Lapac and Siassi are volcanic, and are much denuded of 

 forest, so much so, indeed, as to be almost bare in some parts. 

 The rainy season too had fairly set in, and heavy tropical showers 

 fell at intervals during our stay, so that we were unable to add 

 many specimens to our collections, and thinking that Tawi-tawi — an 

 island thirty or forty miles to the south-west — would probably 

 prove a more interesting locality, we weighed anchor and left on 

 May 19th. We directed our course towards the northern shore, for 

 one of our chief reasons for visiting the island was to see what 

 progress had been made by a Spanish settlement that had been 

 recently established on it. We kept a good look-out, for this part 

 of the archipelago is entirely unsurveyed, and early in the after- 

 noon arrived at our destination, which was revealed at some little 

 distance by the presence of a small gun-boat anchored off the 

 settlement. Seawards, Tataan is protected by a chain of reefs and 

 banks which, as we steamed into the large harbour thus formed, 

 were \'isible for an immense distance ahead, the yellow sand 

 glaring in the hot afternoon sun. As we approached the ship, a boat 

 put off and the captain came on board. He was in the confidential 

 stage of intoxication, and moimting the bridge wanted to pilot us 

 to our anchorage, intimating afterwards that he would be glad of a fee 

 for his serAices • This we pretended not to understand, and con- 

 gratulated ourselves shortly afterwards on having got rid of him. 



Tataan had been founded five months before our visit. It 

 was the first attempt of the Spaniards to gain a footing on Tawi- 

 tawi, an island where the natives have a bad name even for Sulus. 

 By no stretch of the imagination could it be called a taking place. 



