Tuesday morning the sun rose over the lofty mountains on the island of Leyte, and the Uranus shaped her course for Catbalogan, another of the larger hemp-ports. The steam up the bay blotched with islands was perfection, and by ten o'clock the anchor hunted round for a soft bed in the ooze, some eight hundred yards off a sandy beach, above which lay the town. Those of us who had energy enough to bolt our hearty breakfast were taken by the jolly-boat onto the mud flats, and were carried through the shallow water on oars to dry land. On the slopes of the higher mountains, behind the town, the hemp-plants (looking exactly like banana-trees), grew luxuriously, and in front of many of the houses in Catbalogan the white fibre was out drying on clothes-lines. A short taste of the hot sun easily satisfied our curiosity as to Catbalogan, and we were off to the ship again for more breakfast, just as several hungry-looking Spanish guests, including the Governor's family, came aboard from the town to partake of a meal hearty enough to last them till the arrival of the next steamer. From Catbalogan to its sister town, Tacloban, four hours to the south, the course leads among the narrow straits between high, richly wooded islands, and the scenery was most picturesque. Here and there little white beaches gleamed along the shore, and in front of the nipa shanties that now and then looked out from among the trees hung rows of hemp drying in the sun. Off and on the big waves, kicked up by the forward movement of the Uranus in the land-locked waters, woke up the stillness resting on the banks, and nearly upset small banca loads of the white fibre which was perhaps being paddled down to some larger centre from more remote stamping-grounds. From the bridge our view was most comprehensive, and it wasn't long before the steamer actually entered the river like strait that separates the islands of Samar and Leyte. We twisted around like a snake through the narrow channel, on each side of which were high hills and mountains, richly treed with cocoanuts and hemp-plants, and, just as the sun was getting low, hauled into Tacloban, situated inside an arm of land that protects it from the dashing surges of the Apostles' Bay beyond. At Tacloban there was little to see. A high range of hills rose behind the town, and in the evening half-light everything looked more or less attractive. We climbed a small knoll that looked off over the Bay of St. Peter and St. Paul to the south and down over the village. The strait through which we came stretched up back among the hills like a river, and in the foreground lay the Uranus. A number of hemp store-houses lined the water-front, and as usual the ever-present Chinese were the central figures of the commercial part of the community. At eight the anchor came up once more, and we left Tacloban to steam religiously down the bay of St. Peter and St. Paul for Cabalian, eight hours to the south.