Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: LETTER VI. A WASTED LAND Iloilo, Christmas Eve, 1904. We have just come back from a delightful drive, to a town called Molo, which lies inland, in the direction of the river, but on the opposite bank to Jaro, the latter, as I think I told you, having been the capital of the Island of Panay in the olden days. There is a good road out to both of these towns, which crosses the river at Molo, and makes a circle, passing through a village called Mjndoriao, and this is the great drive of the place, in fact the only one. The whole round is about 8 or 9 miles, however, which is too long for a paseo (promenade), so the carriages roll out at sunset to one of the two towns, turn round the quaint, ramshackle, old plazas, and return whence they came, spinning along in the fresh night air, with lamps lighted, and all the little ponies gallantly determined to pass each other. Along the sides of the road, for a long way out of the town, stretches a vast suburb of picturesque native huts of palm thatch, built on high poles in the jungle, or standing in the edge of the river, surrounded by palms and all sorts of tropical trees of different brilliant greens, through which may be caught glimpses of intensely blue river or sea and exquisite mauve mountain ranges. We enjoyed our drive immensely, and kept wishing that Papa could see the endless pictures of brown and yellow huts, women in bright redCUSTOM HOUSE METHODS 43 dresses, the groups of children and animals, the grey old Spanish churches and belfries—I think if you ever came out here he would spend his whole time on a camp stool, sketching for dear life ! Our cases have come from home at last, though I don't know why I should say that, as they have not been so very long after us, but we were rather grubbing along till they ca... --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.