AFRO-IXDIAN REGIONS. 



491 



THE EAST INDIAN REGIONS. 



9. The Chinese East Indian Region. 



On the morning of the 8th, the V'incennes reached the Bashee 

 Islands; a separate cluster, a short distance from the Nortliern ex- 

 treme of Luzon ; all of them small, jet seeming too much hroken and 

 irregular to be mere outlaying fragments of the main land. One of 

 these islands was cloud-capped at its Eastern end : the others, not 

 uniformly high, contained mountains of perhaps a thousand feet in 

 elevation: "Goat Island" being comparatively low, and bordered with 

 perpendicular cliffs. We passed within about four miles of the nearest 

 island, the surf being plainly visible; the land, as throughout the 

 Group, seeming barren and unwooded ; its general brownish-green 

 color varied only by the shadows of the numerous ridges, by patches 

 apparently of fragments of rock on steep broken acclivities; with 

 perhaps, bushes growing on these patches, and in the bottom of one 

 or two ravines. 



On the 9th, the Vincennes having rounded the Northwest angle of 

 Luzon, was sailing Southward along the coast ; the weather cloudy, 

 with a fair breeze. — On the 10th, the breeze moderated, and the 

 weather became more clear : and at 2 p.m., the laud was in sight, for 

 the most part liigli and mountainous, with rounded eminences and 

 gentle slopes, imparting a continental rather than an insular aspect. 

 Two of these eminences, situated some seventy miles North of Manila, 

 were cloud-capped, and seemed as much as three or four thousand feet 

 in elevation. Tlie face of the country was more California-like than 

 I expected to have seen in the East Indies ; the frequent openings 

 presenting the same pale-brown tint, and the scattered trees having 

 very little fresh luxuriance ; but besides more frequently forming 

 woods, they had not the dark foliage of the California cypress. We 



