[Frequence of fires.] Similar destructive fires are very common.  The houses, which with few exceptions are built of bamboo and wood, become perfectly parched in the hot season, dried into so much touchwood by the heat of the sun.  Their inhabitants are extremely careless about fire, and there are no means whatever of extinguishing it.  If anything catches fire on a windy day, the entire village, as a rule, is utterly done for.  During my stay in Bulacan, the whole suburb of San Miguel, in the neighborhood of Manila, was burnt down, with the exception of the house of a Swiss friend of mine, which owed its safety to the vigorous use of a private fire-engine, and the intermediation of a small garden full of bananas, whose stems full of sap stopped the progress of the flames.

[To Calumpit by carriage.] I travelled to Calumpit, a distance of three leagues, in the handsome carriage of an hospitable friend.  The roads were good, and were continuously shaded by fruit-trees, coco and areca palms.  The aspect of this fruitful province reminded me of the richest districts of Java; but the pueblos here exhibited more comfort than the desas there.  The houses were more substantial; numerous roomy constructions of wood, in many cases, even, of stone, denoted in every island the residence of official and local magnates.  But while even the poorer Javanese always give their wicker huts a smart appearance, border the roads of their villages with blooming hedges, and display everywhere a sense of neatness and cleanliness, there were here far fewer evidences of taste to be met with.  I missed too the alun-alun, that pretty and carefully tended open square, which, shaded by waringa trees, is to be met with in every village in Java.  And the quantity and variety of the fruit trees, under whose leaves the desas of Java are almost hidden, were by no means as great in this province, although it is the garden of the Philippines, as in its Dutch prototype.

[Calumpit.] I reached Calumpit towards evening, just as a procession, resplendent with flags and torches, and melodious with song, was marching round the stately church, whose worthy priest, on the strength of a letter of introduction from Madrid, gave me a most hospitable reception.  Calumpit, a prosperous place of 12,250 inhabitants, is situated at the junction of the Quingua and Pampanga rivers, in an extremely fruitful plain, fertilized by the frequent overflowing of the two streams.

[Mt.  Arayat.] About six leagues to the north-west of Calumpit, Mount Arayat, a lofty, isolated, conical hill, lifts its head.  Seen from Calumpit, its western slope meets the horizon at an angle of 20 deg., its eastern at one of 25 deg.; and the profile of its summit has a gentle inclination of from 4 deg. to 5 deg..