On the other hand there is up to this moment no regular communication with any of the adjacent islands in the Archipelago, even the Government only availing itself of such sailing-vessels as private adventurers may from time to time charter. When any change of officials takes place, the new appointment must often remain vacant for months till the occupant reach his post; indeed, during our stay in Manila we witnessed a case in which the consort of the Governor of the Marianne Archipelago had been vainly waiting for months for an opportunity to return to her husband.* Some foreign merchants settled at Manila had made an offer to the Government, in consideration of a fixed subsidy, to establish regular communication between the various islands of the Archipelago, and to keep it on foot by means of five steam vessels. But the Colonial Government did not see its way to giving the company a larger subsidy than 43,000 Spanish piasters (£6763 at par), and thus the whole p lan once more fell through, the carrying out of which would so greatly tend to the development of these islands.

Notwithstanding the fertility of the islands in islands in all manner of natural wealth, there are at present but three products of the soil wealth are exported in anything like large quantities to the European and North American markets, and which thus give this group any importance in the eyes of the commercial world, viz. tobacco, Abáca, or Manila hemp; and sugar. The amount of all other articles exported, such as coffee, indigo, Sapan wood (Cæsalpinia sapan), straw-plait,** hides and skins of animals, &c., is proportionately but small. We visited the great manufacturies of Binondo, as also that of Arroceros, where cigarillos, or paper-covered cigarettes, are exclusively manufactured. The former gives employment to about 8000 work-people, mostly women. In the long workshops, where it is common to see 800 females sitting at work on low wooden benches in front of a narrow table, there prevails a most disagreeable deafening hubbub. Some are busy moistening the leaves, and cutting off the requisite lengths, or are sorting the fragments and smaller pieces, of which inferior cigars will be made; others hold in their right hand a flat smoothed stone, with which they keep continually pounding each single leaf, in order to make these more susceptible of being rolled up. This drumming noise, and the cries of several hundreds of workwomen, who, on the appearance of foreign visitors, handle their implements of stone with yet more energy, apparently out of sheer wantonness, the strong odour of the tobacco, and the disagreable exhalations from the bodies of so many human beings shut up together in one close apartment, in a tropical temperature, have such an unpleasant, uncomfortable effect that one hastens to exchange the damp sultry vapours of the workshops for the fresh air without.

** Of these straw-plait manufacturies the cigar-holders are especially noticeable for their fine texture and elegance. These are usually sold at very high prices; some of the more elegant of these fetching from 40 to 50 dollars (£8 to £10). Straw mats and hats, not inferior in finess of texture to those of Panama, are made here of palm fibre, and form a not unimportant article of exportation.