"Then we entered the Strait of San Bernardino, between Luzon and Samar, and passed for a day through a region of isles. The sea was glassy save when a school of porpoises tore it apart in their pursuit of the flying fish. On its deep sapphire the islands seemed to float,
sometimes a mere pinnacle of rock, sometimes a cone-shaped peak timbered down to the beach where the surf fell over.
Toward evening, when the breeze freshened slightly, we seemed almost to brush the sides of some of these islets, and they invited us with sparkling pools and coves, with beaches over which the sea wimpled, and with grassy hillsides running out into promontories above cliffs of volcanic rock. And, yonder in the golden west, shimmering, dancing, in rosy-tinted splendor, more islands beckoned us to the final glory of a matchless day--clouds heaped on clouds, outlined in thin threads of gold, and drawing, in broad shafts of smoky flame, the vapors of an opal sea. At that time I had not seen the famous Inland Sea of Japan, but I have since passed through it twice, and feel that in beauty the Strait of San Bernardino has little to yield to her far-famed neighbor." - Mary H. Fee, 1835
sometimes a mere pinnacle of rock, sometimes a cone-shaped peak timbered down to the beach where the surf fell over.
Toward evening, when the breeze freshened slightly, we seemed almost to brush the sides of some of these islets, and they invited us with sparkling pools and coves, with beaches over which the sea wimpled, and with grassy hillsides running out into promontories above cliffs of volcanic rock. And, yonder in the golden west, shimmering, dancing, in rosy-tinted splendor, more islands beckoned us to the final glory of a matchless day--clouds heaped on clouds, outlined in thin threads of gold, and drawing, in broad shafts of smoky flame, the vapors of an opal sea. At that time I had not seen the famous Inland Sea of Japan, but I have since passed through it twice, and feel that in beauty the Strait of San Bernardino has little to yield to her far-famed neighbor." - Mary H. Fee, 1835
