290 Siz Weeks in Southern Mindanao. 
Queen Isabella. They steamed down the coast until they found 
the shell, dropped their strongest hawser around it and put on all 
steam, but after some time found that instead of raising the shell 
the steamer was gradually sinking, being drawn under by the 
immense weight. So they cut the hawser and left the shell in its 
bed, where they declare it may yet be seen. The smaller species 
are found in the mud at low tide. Their toothed valves lie gaping 
apart, and must be traps ready set for any inquisitive monkey who 
may pass their way. The larger ones are found in deeper water, 
and there are stories of divers after pearl oysters being caught in 
their immense jaws and held to their death. 
Zamboanga is a town of six or eight thousand inhabitants, 
nearly all Indian, but of mixed tribes, it having been a convict 
colony a generation ago, formed from the various islands of the 
group. The Spanish residents, twenty-five or thirty in number, 
are gathered with the principal Chinese merchants, at the south 
end of the town, near the old stone fort and the church. The 
native town reaches down the coast to the north for a mile and a 
half, but is concealed in an immense grove of the finest coco — 
palms. The houses are of the ordinary Philippine type, — great 
baskets of nipa palm leaves, mounted on poles, eight or ten feet 
above ground. In front of a part of the native town is a village 
of Moros, Mohammedan natives, who may be the original inhabi- _ 
tants of the place. Their houses are of the same form as those of © 
the Christians, but are poorer, and many of them built over the 
water, in true Malay style. These people seem to pretty nearly 
monopolize the business of boat-making and fishing for the town, 
leaving the Christians to cultivate the soil. 
Behind the city is a level country extending for three or four — 
miles to the foot of the hills. Much of itis overflowed and planted 
to rice. The hills themselves showed patches of sugar cane and 
other crops, whose cultivation was crawling up their sides, but 
above and beyond all was still unbroken forest. 
We made daily visits to the market, and found the Moro men, 
marked by their red turbans and tight-fitting drawers, busy selling 
fish, while their wives were squatted on the ground with little 
piles — one for a cent — of shell fish spread out before them. 
Among these were several species of spider shells in abundance, 
some fine cones and cowries, and great numbers of several species 
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