Four Young Explorers; Or, Sight-Seeing in the Tropics by Oliver Optic (best romantic novels to read .TXT) 📗

seven guns, which was returned by both ships; and then they sped on their voyage of eight hundred miles to Manila. The captain gave out[245] the course east by north half-north, and the French flag was hauled down from the topmast. The passengers of the Blanche had been sent on board of her, while those of the Guardian-Mother continued to promenade the deck. The commander noticed that some of them were gaping and yawning, and he remembered that they had had only three or four hours' sleep.

"I advise you all to turn in and finish your night's sleep," said he. "Professor Giroud will give his lecture on the Philippine Islands and Manila to-morrow at half-past nine. There is nothing to do till dinner-time. No lunch will be served to-day in the cabin, for you have but just left the breakfast-table; but any one can ring his bell, and send for whatever is wanted."

The passengers seemed to think favorably of this advice, for they all went below. There was nothing to see; for there was not a single island in the course, and the ship was soon out of sight of land, not to see it again till she made Luban Island, off the entrance to Manila Bay. The wind was almost dead ahead, though it blew very gently; but this circumstance soon attracted the attention of Scott, who had been so busy with the frolics that he had not had time to consult his books and chart.

It was not his watch; and he went to his stateroom, returning very soon with the blue book that goes with the chart of the Indian Ocean. He found that there was an east monsoon which prevailed in the China Sea north of the equator.[246]

"What's the matter, Mr. Scott?" asked the captain when he found him absorbed over his book. "Do you think we are going wrong, or that there is a typhoon within hail?"

"Neither, sir; I was looking to see why the wind was east to-day," replied the third officer.

"You have discovered by this time that there is an east monsoon coming in between those from the north-east and south-west."

"But we did not find it coming up from Sarawak to Bangkok," added the young officer.

"Your course carried you within between one hundred and one hundred and fifty miles of the Malay Peninsula. This and the great island of Sumatra doubtless have some influence on the winds. Both of these bodies of land are very hot; and, as the air from them tends to the cooler atmosphere of the sea, they favor the south-west monsoons. All these bodies of land modify to some extent the prevailing winds."

Scott was satisfied with the explanation, for it conformed with what he found in his book. When he carried his authority back to his room, he turned in and took his nap, in order to be ready for his watch at eight bells in the afternoon watch. In fact, all but the watch on deck were asleep.

The passengers seemed to be rather logy in their movements and heavy of intellect, perhaps because they had slept so well. It was cool at sea in comparison with the shore, and they had by this time become accustomed to extremely hot weather. But[247] they waked up before the meal was finished, and all the talk was about the frolics of the last two days.

"What do you call the place where we go next, Captain Ringgold?" asked Uncle Moses. "I see it spelled in the books with a single l and with a double l. Which is correct?"

"Both," replied the commander. "If you are writing Spanish, you use one l; if you are writing English, you may use two l's, though I don't believe in doing so."

"Do the Spaniards ever double the l?"

"I will leave the professor to answer that question," replied the captain.

"They never spell Manila with two l's when they spell it correctly; for that would make another word of it,—a common noun instead of a proper, and meaning quite another thing," the professor explained.

"Perhaps I am stupid, Professor, and I know next to nothing of the Spanish language," added Uncle Moses, "but I don't quite understand you. If a Spaniard spelled the capital of the Philippine Islands with a double l it wouldn't be the capital at all?"

"It would not."

"What would it be?"

"It would be something of which Miss Blanche has a couple in her possession; and I may say the same of every lady at the table," said the professor with a cheerful smile on his face.

"But which no gentleman has?" suggested the worthy trustee.[248]

"I don't say that; for the word means in Spanish a small hand."

There was a general laugh around the table, and all the party held out their paws like dancing bears.

"Then Spaniards must be good spellers," said Dr. Hawkes. "There is very great difference between the capital of the Philippine Islands and Miss Blanche's pretty little hands."

"Ll, which we call double l, is treated as one letter in Spanish, and it has its own peculiar sound, nearly equivalent to ly in English; and therefore Miss Blanche's small hand would be called mah-nil-ya, which is not the capital spoken off. The name of all the islands is spelled in English with double p,—Philippine; but that is not Spanish, though the geographers have generally adopted that orthography. The Spanish name is Las Islas Filipinas."

"Thank you, Professor; and I think I understand it now," added Uncle Moses.

"Quiera V. enseñarme sus manillas, Signorina Blanche?" said Louis with a laugh. Of course she did not understand him; and he added, "Will you show me your small hands, Miss Blanche?" But she did not do so.

"I should very much like to have all geographical names reduced to a common standard, for I do not believe in translating proper names," said the commander. "I have been sometimes greatly bothered by the difference in names. When I came to Aachen in Belgium, I did not know where I was till I looked[249] in my guide-book, and found it was Aix-la-Chapelle. Vienna has about three or four different names, and people there would not know what you meant if you called it as we do, or Vienne as the French write and spell it."

"I think you are quite right, Mr. Commander," added the professor.

"But I have a few words to say about our voyage; for I find it necessary to repress the ambition of some of my passengers," continued the captain. "Some of them wish to visit all the Philippine Islands, and there are about two thousand of them."

"Oh! oh! oh!" groaned some of the party.

"But the number I gave includes every rock, reef, and shoal that lifts its head above the water. Some call it twelve hundred. We will not stay to count them; but there are many of them big enough to have quite a number of towns on them. I wish to announce that it will not be possible for us to go to any of them except Manila, spelled with one l, and make an excursion up the Pasig River, and to the lake. But the ambition of the party is more expansive in regard to China and Japan. As I have told you, we can take only a specimen city in each country we visit. Hong-Kong and Canton in China, with some more northern port or city not yet selected, will be enough to give us an idea of the Central Flowery Nation."

The party left the cabin, and went on deck to study the map of the islands they were to visit.[250]

CHAPTER XXVII SOME ACCOUNT OF THE PHILIPPINES

The Guardian-Mother continued on her course without encountering either typhoon or other tempest, and her passengers kept very comfortable under the awnings. The ship was in about 10° of north latitude and 110° of east longitude. She was sailing with the wind nearly dead ahead, and therefore the breeze was good on deck, and even in the cabins.

At the appointed hour the passengers were in their chairs in Conference Hall, two of them occupied by the siamangs, and the baby in the lap of Miss Blanche, who had become very much attached to the little creature. On the frame in front of the orang-outang was a complete map of the Philippine Islands, covering seventeen degrees of latitude, and ten of longitude, with enough of the seas around them to make their position clear to the audience.

Professor Giroud was introduced for this occasion as the speaker; and he was received with more than usual applause, for he had not occupied the rostrum as much as formerly, General Noury having been kept busy since his reappearance off Batavia. It may be said that after the rest of the day before the party were in excellent condition to be instructed.[251]

"We are sailing just now in comparatively shallow water; and just to the south of us there are innumerable shoals, with only from four to ten fathoms of water on them. If the water were entirely drained from the China Sea, the bottom would be like a hilly region; for these numerous shoals would be the tops of various elevations, and the same would be true of a less extent north of us. The portion of the sea over which we are now moving would appear to be a considerable valley. You all have imagination enough to see what I have described.

"All around the Philippines on the east and south the water is from two to four thousand fathoms deep; so that if the seas were dried up around them, these islands would appear like a number of irregular chains of mountains, and the highest peak would be over 10,000 feet above the present surface of the water.

"From north to south these islands extend about a thousand miles, and from east to west about half that distance, with the Sulu or Mindoro Sea four hundred miles across it in either direction, nearly enclosed within them; for the north-east coast of Borneo is part of its boundary on the south. As the commander mentioned at dinner last evening, there are over two thousand islands in the group; and leaving out those rocks and shoals which are not big enough for a man to stand upon, there are twelve hundred of them.

"On a map of the world, or even of Asia, the[252] Philippine Islands occupy but a small space, and in your school-days you have doubtless regarded them as of but little importance; but several of the islands are larger than any New England State, and two of them are as large as Virginia and Ohio, and nearly as large as New York and Pennsylvania. Luzon and Mindanao," and the professor pointed to them on the map, "the most northerly and the most southerly, have each about 40,000 square miles, and the area of all the islands is 116,000 miles. I think most of you could have no idea from your study of maps of the extent of the Philippines.

"Mindoro, the next island south of Luzon, has 9,000; and the others from 1,200 to 5,500. I shall not mention or describe them separately. We shall visit only Manila and the country near it, and you would not remember even the names of the islands over night. They are all mountainous and volcanic. The highest mountain is Apo, in Mindanao, which is 10,400 feet high, and there are others of 9,000 feet.

"The islands are volcanic, and therefore subject to earthquakes; and an instrument in Manila which indicates vibrations of the earth is said to be shaking about all the time. Several destructive ones are recorded in the past. In 1863 Manila was nearly destroyed by one, and the great southern island is especially liable to them.

"The mountain ranges mostly extend north and south; and there is space between them for some considerable rivers, as the Rio Grande in Luzon has[253] a course of 220 miles. The Agusan in Mindanao is navigable for 60 miles. In this island are several lakes, with rivers flowing from them. In addition to which are many lacustrine basins."

"Spare us, Professor!" exclaimed Uncle Moses.

"The word comes from lacus, Latin for lake, and applies here to such lakes as send their overflow to the sea or other lakes by streams made by the rush of water. But I don't use many such words, and I hardly expected a classical scholar to object," replied the professor.

"But I objected in behalf of several here who never studied Latin; and besides the overflow is entirely apart from the root of the word. But I am satisfied, and the commander may invite you to proceed," chuckled Brother Avoirdupois.

"On account of the high mountains and the abundant sea-breezes, though hot and moist, this group is not so unhealthy as most tropical islands and countries. The fevers of hot countries are here of the mild, intermittent kind"—

"What is intermittent, Professor?" asked Felix. "Is it the kind they don't have in Ireland?"

"I should say that it was."

"An intermittent fever, Felix, is one that comes and goes, like the old woman's soap," interjected Mrs. Blossom, the nurse;