The Central Philippines. 783 
through. The hemp comes out white and glistening, and requires 
no other preparation but drying to fit it for baling and shipment. 
Through the fall in price of sugar, hemp is now the most impor- 
tant article of export from the islands. 
We reached a height of three thousand five hundred feet, the 
path leading for most of the way along the narrow crests of moun- 
tain ridges. Oaks were plenty at these heights, and with them 
Indian pitcher plants, a beautiful colored leafed begonia, a colens in 
in flower, and a great number of ferns, and mosses. Everything 
was dripping with moisture, and land leeches were crawling over 
the ground or hanging from ‘the plants ready to drop upon us. 
The lakes were small—one a half mile, and the other perhaps a 
mile in length, and at a height of about three thousand feet. They 
were in steep ravines between mountains, so that there were no val- 
leys about them in which we could hunt. A step from shore on 
any side took us over our heads in water. Deer and wild hogs 
were abundant, and our Indian hunters tried to drive them into the 
lakes with their dogs, but without success. The only life we saw 
in the water of the lakes was leeches, of great size, and crabs and 
water-fowl were almost absent. A few great hornbills were flying 
from one mountain crest to another, but it was folly to attempt to 
follow them. ; 
We found a little piece of level ground at the mouth of a moun- 
tain brook, where we built us a shelter and camped. We shot a 
few species of flycatchers from the trees over our hut, and after 
staying two days, and sleeping cold with the themometer 67°, we 
descended to the coast. While some of the party went on to Cebu 
by steamer, a division crossed the strait of Tafiau to Cebu, and fol- 
lowed the west coast of that island to the town of Barili, then 
crossing the mountains to the east coast followed this to the north 
until we reached the city of Cebu. This is the oldest Spanish town 
in the islands, and is the capital of the island and a port open to 
foreign trade. 
We found the island of Cebu still more thoroughly stripped of its 
timber than the islands to the west, but after doing what we could 
to get a fair collection of its birds we concluded that it, too, belonged 
zoologically with Negros and Panay. A brief visit by two of us 
to Bojol convinced us that this, too, must go with the islands to the 
