There is nothing picturesque about the lower reaches of the Río Grande, though its upper course, through hilly country, is different in this respect. The remains of one or two old towns, cut in two by the shift of the river-bed, excited our curiosity. So did, from to time, the _barangayans_, or native river-boats, huge, clumsy, ill-built, and generally with but four or five inches of free-board amidships on full load. These craft look as though they ought to sink by mere capillary attraction. However, people are born, live, and die aboard of them, so they must be safe enough. In the afternoon the river widened and its right bank, anyway, grew bolder and occasionally more permanent-looking, and finally, about an hour before sunset, we perceived the low white godowns of Aparri. We landed not at a wharf, but at the outer edge of the huddle of craft crowding the water front, and put up at the Fonda de Aparri, having done eighty-odd miles in a little over ten hours. All the tobacco of the Valley reaches the world through Aparri; it is consequently a port of considerable importance. But it has no safe anchorage and is frightfully exposed to typhoons, all of which, if they do not pass over the place directly, somehow or other appear to step aside to give this region a blow. There is a never-ending conflict in the adjacent waters between the currents of the China Sea and those of the Pacific, making navigation hazardous, and for small boats perilous. On the day of our arrival, calm and fair as it was, a tremendous surf was beating on the bar, the spray and foam mounting in a regular wall many feet high, and driven up, not by the gradual attack of an advancing wave, but by the tireless energy of angry waters ceaselessly beating upon the same spot.