xx The Philippines

Port sub-call! Far at the world then, strange fascinating lands beckonus, did us revel in their exotic spenders,

come with us as we head for Port sub-call! Down the red pathway of the setting sun, across the mighty reaches of the vast Pacific, our ship carries us in comfort and safety, toward the world's greatest island archipelago, the Philippines.

Four hundred large islands and nearly three thousand smaller ones constitute this rich maritime empire, whose land area is only a little less than that of Great Britain and Ireland combined. Verdant jewels of topical spender, the Philippines are washed by waters whose very names are fought with romance.

The Pacific Ocean, the China Sea, the briny domain of the Sultan of Sulu, and steel father-south by the Celebi. We have passed the international date-line, that invisible and mysterious boundary of oxen and an Orient, and steam south to within twenty degrees of the equator, before we sight the purple peaks of Luzon, the most northerly of the Philippines' principal island. Night falls over the lazy tropical waters.

The southern cross comes blazing up over the horizon, and now the moon rises to bathe ship and sea and distant islands with the witching radiance. Time has not altered the spectacle before us. Four centuries ago the moon shone just as it does tonight. Just so two did seabirds, chirped sleepily as they rested upon the slow, heating billows, and just so did a

fragrant breeze bring to a band of weary European mariners the sweet odor of land, of greenery, of fresh water, and the promise of rest beneath shady trees. It is the year 1521. Ghost three in the moonlight we see the tattered sails, the salt caked barnacle encrusted hulls of three tiny caribels of Spain. On the high poop