But this was only a preliminary attack. In the following month a large naval force came down from Manilla, with seventeen hundred troops, and landing near the great tree at the watering-place, marched upon the town while the ships shelled it from the harbour. The Sulus behaved with great courage, and though opposed to regular soldiers, and defending a comparatively unprotected part of the town, as they had reckoned on an attack by sea, and not by land; they held their own for several hours, and it cost their enemy one hundred and fifty killed and wounded before they abandoned their houses and retired to the hills. Datu Daniel and his brothers defended their stockade to the last, and it was here that the Spanish suffered their severest loss; several of the young Sulu nobles were killed, and the stockade carried by assault. The Spanish troops behaved very well. The town was then garrisoned, but it would have taken an army to subdue the whole island, as on losing Sugh, the sultan and his ministers retired to the mountains, where the Spanish forces found it impracticable to follow them. A kind of truce was patched up, but they have refused to acknowledge the supremacy of Spain, and have removed the seat of government beyond the reach of ships’ artillery, and I saw a letter from the sultan, in which he said he would rather die than hoist the Castilian flag. Last year I heard the sultan was most anxious to send his sons to England to be educated, but had no means of accomplishing his wish. The Spaniards soon found their conquest a very unprofitable one, as they only held those spots which were actually in the possession of their troops; they soon, therefore, abandoned the island, though they for some years had a garrison, I heard, on the little island of Tulyan. I pitied the sultan and his nobles, as with all their faults they were capable of much better things, and had a little judicious influence been used to guide them well, and a little power exercised to destroy the actual pirate haunts, there would have been no occasion to destroy the pretty town of Sugh. I do not think I have mentioned elsewhere, that when I first saw this picturesque island, there was a forest, dead in appearance, on the right hand of the town, covering the slopes of one of the high hills. This was an extensive wood of fine teak trees. A long drought had rendered everything as dry as touchwood, when an incautious islander lit a fire among the trees, and the dead leaves and twigs around being perfectly dry soon ignited, and the flames spread in every direction, and charred and burnt the trees, stripping them of their luxuriant foliage; but five months after, I again visited this spot, and found that many of the apparently dead trees were now putting forth buds and young leaves, as the fire had not completely destroyed all.