The whistle blew, the special artist with his camera ambled aboard, amidst a pile of sun-hats, oranges, and excitement, and soon the Vigilante was steaming up the river on her sixty-mile trip. Familiar objects were first passed, but soon after leaving the uptown club new scenes presented themselves. The launch stirred up large waves astern that washed both banks of the river with great energy, and the first incident was the swamping of three banca-loads of grass that were on their way down to Manila under charge of Indian pedlers. Turn after turn opened up new scenes; our house on the hill began to fade away, and soon we skimmed through native villages where white blood was "not in it." The hills increased in size, the river lessened, and great bamboo-trees hung over toward the central channel. At one point, high up on the bluffs, perched a Chinese pagoda-like chapel, said to have been constructed by a wealthy Celestial as a thanks-offering for his escape from a crocodile. He was bathing in the river, so the story goes, when suddenly he saw the monster making for him. He threw up his hands and vowed to build a monument to his patron saint if escape was vouchsafed him. And no sooner had he spoken than the crocodile turned to stone and lies there to-day, a long, low black mass, fretting the current that ripples over it. As we passed the rock it looked as if it had never been anything else, but the afternoon was too pleasant to doubt the veracity of the legend. On we went. The mountains ahead grew more to look like masses of rock and trees and less like soft blue velvet. Pasig, an important town, was left behind, the lowlands came again, a multitude of fish-weirs stuck up ahead, and before we knew it the great lake was holding us on its rather muddy waters just where it slobbered into the mouth of the river, its only outlet.
On all sides save the one by which we had entered rose the mountains right out of the water, and I was reminded of Norway or Scotland. It was like a sea, and the farther shore was below the horizon. The sun had set and the full moon rose just ahead as we kept along the coast to the north. At half after eight o'clock we anchored off a little town called Santa Cruz that seemed to be backed up by two very lofty mountain-peaks, and we were soon surrounded by two bancas filled with natives who began to transfer our many effects. And so we left the launch, were slowly poled ashore, and next found ourselves on a sandy beach surrounded by much people and baggage. Dispatching two of our retinue up into the town to fetch enough of the two-wheeled covered gigs called carromatas for our assembly, in about three-quarters of an hour we had the felicity of seeing seven come racing down the road to the lake shore. Our destination, by the way, was a town called Pagsanjan, about three-quarters of an hour from Santa Cruz, and situated just at the foot of a range of mountains. The chattels were soon loaded, there was a cracking of whips, a creaking of harness, and the long procession started off at a rattling gait through the town and out into the rich cocoanut groves beyond.