I shall now, just as I heard it myself, give the explanation of the advocates' speeches, which I did not entirely understand. The bride's mother had married without a wedding portion on her husband's side, so she had gone through very adverse and pinching circumstances. The temple that the angel had told her to demand for her daughter was, a house; and the ten columns, composed of ten stones each, signified that with the house a sum of one hundred piasters would be requisite--that is, twenty pounds sterling. The speech of the young man's advocate explained that he would give the house, as he said nothing about it; but, being worth only eighty piasters, he threw himself at the feet of the parents of his betrothed, that the twenty piasters which he was minus, might offer no obstacle to his marriage. The pardon accorded by the queen signified the grace shown to the young man, who was accepted with his eighty piasters only. The servitude which precedes matrimony, and of which I have spoken, was practised long before the conquest of these isles by the Spaniards. This would seem to prove the origin I attribute to the Tagalocs, whom I believe to be descended from the Malays, and these latter, being all Mussulmans, would naturally have preserved some of the ancient patriarchal customs. Believing that I have sufficiently described the Indians and their habits, I will now introduce to my readers two species of monsters that I have often bad occasion to observe, mid even to combat--the one a denizen of forests, the boa constrictor; the other of lakes and rivers, the cayman or alligator. At the period at which I first occupied my habitation, and began to colonise the village of Jala-Jala, caymans abounded on that side of the lake. From my windows I daily saw them sporting in the water, and waylaying and snapping at the dogs that ventured too near the brink. One day, a female servant of my wife's, having been so imprudent as to bathe at the edge of the lake, was surprised by one of them, a monster of enormous size. One of my guards came up at the moment she was being carried off; he fired his musket at the brute, and hit it under the fore-leg, or arm-pit, which is the only vulnerable part. But the wound was insufficient to check the cayman's progress, and it disappeared with its prey. Nevertheless, this little bullet hole was the cause of its death; and here it is to be observed, that the slightest wound received by the cayman is incurable. The shrimps which abound in the lake get into the orifice, gradually their number increases, until at last they penetrate deep into the solid flesh, and into the very interior of the body. This is what happened to the one which devoured my wife's maid. A month after the frightful occurrence the cayman was found dead upon the bank, five or six leagues from my house. Some Indians brought back to me the unfortunate woman's earrings, which they had found in the monster's stomach.