[Unreliable excuses.] In opposition to my wish to ascend the mountain, great obstacles were said to exist when every one would be occupied in preparations for the Easter festival, which would hardly occur during the succeeding weeks.  As these objections did not convince me, a more substantial reason was discovered the next morning.  Inland shoes are excellent for the mud, and particularly for horseback; but for climbing mountains, or rough ground, they would not last a day; and the one remaining pair of strong European shoes, which I reserved for particular purposes, had been given away by my servant, who did not like climbing mountains, on the pretext they were very much too heavy for me.

[A shipwrecked family.] The shore from Barceloneta to Cabusao is of the same character as the Daet-Colasi but running north and south; the ground, sandy clay, is covered with a thick stratum of broken bivalves.  The road was very difficult, as the high tide forced us to climb between the trees and thick underwood.  On the way we met an enterprising family who had left Daet with a cargo of coconuts for Naga, and had been wrecked here; saving only one out of five tinajas of oil, but recovering all the nuts. [137] They were living in a small hastily-run-up hut, upon coconuts, rice, fish, and mussels, in expectation of a favorable wind to return.  There were several varieties of shore-birds; but my gun would not go off, although my servant, in expectation of a hunt, had cleaned it with especial care.  As he had lost the ramrod whilst cleaning it, the charge was not withdrawn before we reached Cabusao, when it was discovered that both barrels were full of sand to above the touchhole.

[Making palm-sugar.] The coast was still more beautiful than on the preceding day, particularly in one place where the surge beat against a wood of fan-palms (Corypha sp.).  On the side facing the sea, in groups or rows stood the trees, bereft of their crowns, or lying overthrown like columns amid the vast ruins of temples (one of them was three feet in diameter); and the sight immediately reminded me of Pompeii.  I could not account for the bareness of the trunks, until I discovered a hut in the midst of the palms, in which two men were endeavoring to anticipate the waves in their work of destruction by the preparation of sugar (tunguleh).  For this purpose, after stripping off the leaves (this palm flowering at the top), the upper end of the stem is cut across, the surface of the incision being inclined about five degrees towards the horizon, and, near its lower edge, hollowed out to a very shallow gutter.  The juice exudes over the whole surface of the cut, with the exception of the intersected exterior petioles, and, being collected in the shallow channel, is conducted by a piece of banana-leaf, two inches broad, and four inches long, into a bamboo-cane attached to the trunk.  In order to avert the rain from the saccharine issue, which has a faint, pleasantly aromatic flavor as of barley-sugar, all the trees which have been tapped are provided with caps formed of bent and folded palm-leaves.  The average daily produce of each tree is four bamboos, the interior of which is about three inches and a half in diameter.  When removed, they are full to about eighteen inches; which gives somewhat more than ten quarts daily.