have a great love for strong drink; even the young girls occasionally get intoxicated.  When night came on, the strangers were hospitably lodged in the dwellings of the village.  On such occasions native hospitality shows itself in a very favorable light.  The door of every house stands open, and even balls take place in some of the larger hamlets.  The Spanish and mestizo cavaliers, however, condescend to dance only with mestiza partners, and very seldom invite a pretty native girl to join them.  The natives very rarely dance together; but in Samar I was present on one occasion at a by no means ungraceful native dance where “improvised” verses were sung.  The male dancer compared his partner with a rose, and she answered he should be careful in touching it as a rose had thorns.  This would have been thought a charming compliment in the mouth of an Andalusian.

[Servant subterfuges.] The idle existence we spent in Daraga was so agreeable to my servants and their numerous friends that they were anxious I should stay there as long as possible; and they adopted some very ingenious means to persuade me to do so.  Twice, when everything was prepared for a start the next morning, my shoes were stolen in the night; and on another occasion they kidnapped my horse.  When a native has a particularly heavy load to carry, or a long journey to make, he thinks nothing of coolly appropriating the well-fed beast of some Spaniard; which, when he has done with it, he turns loose without attempting to feed it, and it wanders about till somebody catches it and stalls it in the nearest “Tribunal.”  There it is kept tied up and hungry until its master claims it and pays its expenses.  I had a dollar to pay when I recovered mine, although it was nearly starved to death, on the pretence that it had swallowed rice to that value since it had been caught.

[Petty robberies.] Small robberies occur very frequently, but they are committed—­as an acquaintance, a man who had spent some time in the country, informed me one evening when I was telling him my troubles—­only upon the property of new arrivals; old residents, he said, enjoyed a prescriptive freedom from such little inconveniences.  I fancy some waggish native must have overheard our conversation, for early the next morning my friend, the old resident, sent to borrow chocolate, biscuits, and eggs of me, as his larder and his hen-house had been rifled during the night.

[Daraga market.] Monday and Friday evenings were the Daraga market nights, and in fine weather always afforded a pretty sight.  The women, neatly and cleanly clad, sat in long rows and offered their provisions for sale by the light of hundreds of torches; and, when the business was over, the slopes of the mountains were studded all over with flickering little points of brightness proceeding from the torches carried by the homeward-bound market women.  Besides eatables, many had silks and stuffs woven from the fibers of the pine-apple and the banana for sale.  These goods they carried on their heads; and I noticed that all the younger women were accompanied by their sweethearts, who relieved them of their burdens.