RECOLLECTIONS OF FULL YEARS
ous shoreline; while we were headed for a narrow channel guarded in rock island against which the surf broke in clouds of spray.
"Corregidor," said the skipper, pointing to a high, green hill behind the rocks. Corregidor,—it was the first time I had ever heard the name which since has become synonymous, in so many minds, with Gibraltar. On the other side of the entrance to Manila Bay stood Meriveles, a beautiful mountain, sloping gently back from the sea and up into soft, white clouds. But Manila,—where was Manila? Cavite,—where was Cavite? And where did the Spanish ships lie, when Dewey sailed in past Corregidor not knowing what he would find? Questions, these, which everybody asked in those days. Manila was twenty miles ahead at the far end of the Bay, while Cavite, across on the south shore, in the nearer distance, lay flat and almost invisible under low-spreading trees.
Flat; that is the word which occurs to everybody who sails for the first time into Manila Bay. The city is built on the low-lands; low, as I afterward learned, to the point of being below sea-level in certain places, and subject to sudden floods in the big typhoons. But far behind the flats are towering ranges of blue and purple hills, with here and there a softly rounded mountain standing, seemingly, alone.
The hot sun beat down on the glassy surface of the Bay and sent back a blinding glare which brought an ache into eyes and nerves, but we were all too interested to seek shelter in the darkened cabin.
While our ship was still miles from shore we could see long lines of low, red roofs and the white gleam of many domes and spires; and off to the right we had pointed out to us the eloquent wrecks of some of the Spanish fleet whose masts and battered hulks rose high out of the shallow water in which they were sunk.
But for ourselves, for me, for Mrs. Wright, for Maria
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