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THE 
AMERICAN NATURALIST. 
< Vou. XXII. APRIL, 1888. No. 256, 
SIX WEEKS IN SOUTHERN MINDANAO. 
BY J. B. STEERE. 
A THREE days’ voyage from Puer to Princesa, in the island 
of Paraqua, by way of Balabac and Sooloo, brought us to 
the port of Zamboanga, in the southwest part of Mindanao. 
The harbor is of but little value. It is partly sheltered on the 
south by the low island of Santa Cruz opposite, but is open to 
the storms from the southeast. There had been a heavy blow 
from this direction before we arrived, and a high sea was running ; 
but toward night we got our baggage into a huge dug-out, and 
were paddled ashore. After some trouble with the customs’ offi- 
cers over our baggage, we were finally, after dark, domiciled 
in a shaky old fonda, the only hotel the place affords, a liquor and 
tobacco shop and place for the sale of postage stamps and lottery 
tickets below, and a lodging place above. We gota promising view 
the next morning from our window intoa yard below, where a dozen 
pairs of immense bivalve shells (Tridacna gigas) lay in the sun. 
A careful measurement of the largest pair showed three feet and 
five inches in length and two feet and five inches across the valves. 
They must have weighed toward two hundred pounds each, or 
four hundred pounds for a single shell. We found a single valve 
made a good load for two men. The Spanish naval officers, who 
seem, like other sea-faring people, to be given to telling large 
_ Yarns, tell of one off the south coast of Mindanao which has long 
<n noted for its great size, and that the officers of the steam 
te Salamanca once planned to take it home as a present to 
