Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 23, 2025
We drove through the sand again in a hired and springless Cape cart down to the Point, got into the port-captain's boat and rowed across a little strip of sand at the foot of a winding path cut out of the dense vegetation which makes the bluff such a refreshingly green headland to eyes of wave-worn voyagers.
I was almost awed to think that an Empress of Atlantis had come to such straits as to feel an interest like this in any mere returning subject. It was clear that nothing was to be done by halves. The port-captain's boat led, and we had no choice but to follow. Our galley was run up alongside the royal quay and moored to its posts and rings of gold, all of which are sacred to the reigning house.
Passing these, the boatmen pull up the river to the garrita, a small round house, where the banca is viséd by the people of the gun-boats, at all times stationed there for that purpose, and should there be any packages or baggage in it, the port-captain's deputy, or aide-de-camp, puts a guard on board, who conducts you to the custom-house for the purpose of having it inspected there; but the examination is generally not a very minute one, and personal effects are for the most part passed merely by opening the boxes and showing the tops of their contents, although you may be asked whether it contains either pocket-pistols or a bible, both of which are prohibited and seizable.
For vessels thus stationed there is, generally, a sufficiency of waiting, for a port-captain is apt to be so uncertain of his own dignity, that he must e'en keep folks waiting to prove it to them. But here for us it might have been that the port-captain's boat was waiting.
On approaching Manilla from the bay in one of the bancas or canoes having a cover as a protection against the sun which generally go off to all ships after their anchor has been let go, and the port-captain's boat has boarded the new arrival, the spires, towers of churches, and lofty red-tiled roofs of houses or convents are all that can be seen over the walls, so that the first impressions of a stranger are not in general very vivid or interesting.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking