After the morning bath in the cool river, a cup of chocolate or a little bowl of rice will serve for breakfast. Then the women attend morning mass and kneel for half an hour on the hard tiles. It is still early in the day, and the fantastic mountains, with their wonderful lights and shadows, are just throwing off the veil of mist. Now, in the clear light, the huge, swelling bosom of the hills, the densely-timbered slopes beyond, stand out distinctly, like a picture in a stereoscope. The heavy forests, crowded with gigantic trees, seem like a mound of bushes thickly bunched. Off to the left rises a barren ridge, that might have been the spine of some old reptile of the mezozoic age; and in the center a Plutonic ampitheater--the council-chamber of the gods--is swept by shadows from the passing clouds, or glorified for a brief moment by a flood of light. The boys are then sent out to catch one of the ponies for their father, who is going to inspect his hemp plantation on the foot-hills. His progress will at first be rather slow; for he is a great chatterbox, and if he finds some crony along the road, he will dismount and drink a glass of _tuba_ with him, or dicker with him over an exchange of fighting cocks. The birds are then brought out, and the two men squat down, with the birds in hand, and set them pecking at each other to display their fine points. But the string of _hombres_, with their bolos slung about their waists, making for the mountains, reminds the planter that he must be getting on. His fields are let out to these fellows, who will pay him a proportion of the hemp which they can strip. Although the process of preparing hemp is primitive and slow, the green stalk being stripped by an iron comb, the laboring man can prepare enough in one day to supply his family with "_sow sow_" for an entire week. If he would work with any regularity, especially in the wild hemp-fields, he would soon be "independent," and could buy the hemp from others, which could be sold at a profit to the occasional hemp-boats that come into port. The only capital required is one or two bull-carts and carabaos, a storehouse, and sufficient rice or money to secure his first invoice of hemp. The men who carry it in from the mountains, either on their own backs or on carabaos, sell it for cash or its equivalent in rice at the first store.