The cutter Busuanga of the Philippine Bureau of Navigation had been chartered to go to Tay Tay on the Island of Palawan, to bring back to Manila the party of naturalists of the Bureau of Science who had been studying the little-known fauna and flora of that far-away island, the most westerly of the Philippine group.

After leaving the dock at Manila at sundown we steamed out of the bay, past the searchlights of Corregidor and the other forts which were sweeping entirely across the entrance to the bay in a way that would immediately expose any enemy that might attempt to slip by in the dark, and by nine o'clock we were headed in a south-westerly direction across the China Sea.

The next day we passed through winding passages along the Calamaines group where every hour brought to view new islands of the greatest beauty and of every size and shape. Upon one of these islands is a leper colony which we visited and found most interesting.

Early on the second morning we entered the harbor of the small but ancient village of Tay Tay (pronounced "tie tie" and spelled in various ways) on the eastern shore of Palawan. Not a white man lives in this inaccessible hamlet and it is seldom that one visits it, as there is no regular communication of any sort with the outside world.

The village consists of a dozen or two native huts along the beach in a very pretty grove of coconut trees. Back of the village is a range of low mountains covered with tropical jungle. The main point of interest is a well constructed fort of stone, built on a small promontory that projects out into the bay. The walls of the fort are very massive and are surmounted at each of the four corners by a round watch tower. On its land side the fort is entered through a narrow gate that leads by a stone stairway to the top of the promontory. On various parts of the walls are carvings and inscriptions showing that the different bastions were built at different times.

Within the fort and overlooking the walls is an old stone church whose roof has long since fallen in. Within the fort is also a large cement-lined, stone cistern to hold water in case of siege. The Spanish inscriptions on the walls show that the fort was begun about 1720, though the mission there was established about 1620. Lying about within the fort are a few large iron cannon that were doubtless used by the Spaniards in repulsing the attacks of the Moro pirates. It was for a refuge from these pirates that this old fort was built nearly two hundred years ago in this tiny, reef-protected harbor, on an island that even now is unknown to a large majority of American people although it is a part of our territory.

On the shore, just back of the fort, is another stone church whose roof has also fallen in; and back of this church is a small thatched bell tower with two very good bells of harmonious tones hanging in it. How long these bells have been silent it is difficult to say, but no priest now remains to carry on the work begun nearly three hundred years ago by the brave padres from Spain, and not a Spaniard now lives in that almost forgotten village. But for the moss-covered and still massive gray walls of the fort and the crumbling ruins of the two churches one would never imagine that this tiny village of brown men had ever been inhabited by subjects of the kingdom of Spain.

In passing out of the harbor of Tay Tay we visited a small volcanic island of curiously weathered and water-worn limestone. Except for a narrow beach the sides of this island are almost perpendicular, and the cliffs are honeycombed with dozens of water-worn caves. Many of these caves are of great beauty, resembling the interiors of stone churches; some extend far back into the dark interior of the island, others are lighted by openings at the top. Many of them are beautifully colored, and in an accessible region would doubtless be frequently visited by tourists, while in their isolated location it is possible that they had never before been visited by white men, unless in the old Spanish days. It is in these and in similar caves of this region that the natives obtain the edible birds' nests so highly prized by some, especially the Chinese. The natives are said to have claims on certain caves, and any one found stealing nests from another man's cave is supposedly dealt with as a thief.

These curious nests are built by swifts (swallows) against the walls of the dark caves much in the some way as is done by our common chimney swifts, except that instead of cementing a number of small twigs together by a kind of sticky secretion or saliva, the entire nest is made of the sticky substance which dries into a sort of gummy mass. This substance has but little taste, and why the wealthy Chinese should be willing to pay such enormous prices ($12 to $15 per pound) for it is hard to understand.It is said that the first nest the bird makes in the season brings the highest price because it is of pure material; this nest having been taken the bird builds another, but, having a diminished supply of the secretion, it introduces some foreign matter to help out, and this foreign matter, of course, makes the nest less valuable as food. A third nest may succeed the second, but it has still more foreign matter to still further diminish its value. That the collection of the nests is attended with considerable danger is evident from the vertical, jagged walls of rock that must be scaled, either from below or above, to obtain them.

To those of us who lead busy lives in the centers of what we call twentieth-century civilization, life in a place so isolated from the rest of the world as Tay Tay seems impossible. Yet the inhabitants of this barrio are quite contented and fairly comfortable. They live "the simple life" indeed. While their resources are exceedingly limited their needs and desires are correspondingly few. They never suffer from cold and probably not often from heat or hunger: and they are not cursed with the ambitions that make so many of us dissatisfied with our lives.