The city of Manila, within the walls, was computed by a census taken in 1818, to contain a population of six thousand eight hundred and seventy-five, exclusive of the military. Buildings which rent from five to fourteen hundred dollars per annum, in Binondo, contiguous to the river and its branches, will not in Manila, rent for more than one fourth of that sum, owing to its want of water communication, yet the government have very inconveniently placed the new and extensive custom-house close to the city-walls. There are about seven thousand Chinese settled here; all the Europeans, including the military, do not exceed twenty-five hundred; the rest are Indians, who, were they aware of their strength, might easily wipe from the face of existence, the handful of Europeans and other foreigners, who hold them and their lands in subjection.
Provisions are so low in value, that it is said four dollars will furnish a labourer, in rice, &c., sufficient for his yearly consumption. Labour is exceedingly low; the wages for a servant-man, being from one to one and a half dollars per month. Rice has been sold here for three quarters of a dollar the caban of one hundred and thirty pounds: at this time it is double that price, in consequence of vast quantities having been shipped to Canton. A person possessing the immense sum of twenty-five dollars is considered, among the Indians, as “passing rich,” and immediately quits labour to keep shop in the street, with a moveable stall, or in front of his bamboo-hut; the goods usually consist of burgo, alias areca nut, and betel-leaf, well prepared with liquid chunam for immediate mastication, cocoa-nut oil, a little coarse pottery, wooden shoes, palm-leaf hats, and perhaps a few mats. A great number of the shops contain only the first-named article, and the stock in trade may possibly amount to the sum of two rials, (twenty-five cents;) here they sit cross-legged, during the whole day, or, desiring a change, sideways, on a gridiron bamboo-seat. I have frequently feared the whole stock in trade, would be ejected into the street by their insatiable masticatory powers, but occasionally seeing the havoc they are making, and fearful of becoming bankrupts, they thrust a corner of one of the handspike cigars (which are in common use) into their mouths and finish off the evening with it.
CHAPTER IV.
MANILA CONTINUED—CALZADA—SEA-CUCUMBER—CIGAR-FACTORY AT BINONDO—EXPORTS—DUTIES—WEIGHTS AND CURRENCY—EXCHANGE—IMPORTS—LUZON—CAVITÉ—HURRICANES—LAGO DE BRIA—PINA—INDIAN AND BUFFALO—VISITS TO THE ALCADE.
There is a fashionable drive in Manila, called the Calzada, encompassing, probably, two thirds of the circumference of Manila: it passes over a low, level piece of ground, bordering on the fosse or ditch of the city on one side, and on the open country and parade-ground fronting the bay, on the other. Along this drive, carriages may be seen rolling, filled with well-dressed ladies, but mostly of a dark complexion, (Mestizoes,) smoking cigars with most perfect nonchalance: some are puffing paper cigars—others, those which resemble, in size, Havanas; and again others, a ponderous article which would occupy an indefatigable smoker a week or ten days.
There are no public houses in the neighbourhood, and the only amusement is a dull drive at sunset, day after day, over the same grounds, in preference to others infinitely more pleasant, stopping occasionally to light a cigar from a slow match: this latter article is carried by boys, who infest the road, making loud and frequent vociferations, going upon the full run. The market is abundantly supplied with beef, fish, fowls, ducks, turkeys, geese, fruit, and vegetables. A large proportion of the labouring class take their meals in the street, from the innumerable venders which occupy the sidewalks, to the great annoyance of pedestrians. Among the strange articles exposed for sale in every street are fried locusts, made into a curry. That disgusting looking fish, called by some ichthyologists, Holothurial—sea-cucumber and sea-slug by the English—Bichos do Mar by the Portuguese—Tripango or Trippany by the Javanese—Swala by the Sumatrans—and Balaté by the Philippine islanders, is in common use among the Chinese and Europeans. I have eaten it made into a soup or stew: it has a taste between the green fat of a turtle and the soft gristle of boiled beef, and is said to be very nutritious, but not equal to the edible bird’s-nests, or nests of the sea-swallow of these seas. No less than five thousand, four hundred and eighty-six piculs of one hundred and thirty-seven pounds each, equal to seven hundred and sixty-eight thousand and forty pounds, were shipped from this port to Canton last year, as appears by the custom-house returns, besides a large quantity smuggled. By far the larger portion is brought here by American vessels from the Fejee islands. These fish resemble, when contracted, a cucumber, and it is difficult to discover the eyes and mouth: some are black, others white, gray, &c.: they are, at present, sold at fourteen dollars per picul, the cargo.
The land in the vicinity, for many miles, is low and marshy, but neatly cultivated with rice. It is surprising that health should be enjoyed at all in the midst of rice-swamps, in this sultry climate: thousands of huts are built in the midst of them, when it would prove fatal to the whole population in almost any other country. The healthiness of the climate, I think, must be attributed to the narrowness of that part of the island, and to the constant and refreshing breezes which dissipate its miasma. The bamboo is one of the most useful among the vegetable creation—houses, chairs, fences, settees, buckets, boxes, baskets, hats, drinking-cups, fans, mats for boats, spear-handles, sails, &c., are made of its wood; while the tender root is served up at the table, boiled and roasted, used as a pickle and as a sweetmeat. I visited the celebrated great cigar-factory at Binondo; about five thousand females are employed in it, and about six hundred men: it is a royal monopoly. Every person is searched twice a day to see if he pilfers any of his majesty’s tobacco—he being the sole owner and master of the factory.
MANILA—EXPORTS.
The principal articles exported, (except gold and silver,) were indigo, sugar, rice, hemp or abacia, cotton, cocoa-nut oil, sulphur, balaté, or bichos do mar, coffee, wax and hides, in the following proportions:—
Indigo, thirty-one thousand, one hundred and nineteen arrobas, of which twenty-five thousand were agua rose or liquid, in jars; sugar, six hundred and seventeen thousand, seven hundred and thirty-eight arrobas, excepting eighteen thousand arrobas of the first quality; rice, one million, seventy-four thousand, one hundred and seventy arrobas, including two hundred thousand, uncleaned; hemp, or abacia, one hundred and fifty-three thousand, four hundred and forty-seven arrobas—it is of two qualities, and is called, in the United States, Manila-grass or hemp; cotton, four thousand one hundred and ninety-five arrobas; cocoa-nut oil, six thousand, nine hundred and sixty-four arrobas; sulphur, two thousand, four hundred and eighty arrobas; balaté or bichos do mar, five thousand, four hundred and eighty-six arrobas; coffee, fourteen thousand, six hundred and twenty-five arrobas; hides, twenty-nine thousand, nine hundred and fifty-eight arrobas.
The minor articles of export are dried shark’s fins, oysters, muscles, shrimps and other dried fish, oil of sesamum, edible bird’s-nests, ploughs, hatchets, knives, cowries, rattans, canes, sail-cloth of yéacos, dammer or pitch, tortoise-shell, horns, mother-of-pearl, shells, tallow, shoes and boots, chocolate, soap, cigars, tobacco, saltpetre, lard, dried deer and ox sinews, birds of paradise, wheat, flour and bread, mats and palm hats, cigar-cases, rum, molasses, sugar-candy, sweetmeats, groundnuts, gomuti or sagwire, cabinet furniture, ebony and Japan woods, and Agal, a species of sea-weed, or rather dulse, dissoluble into a glutinous substance, and used in China as a valuable paste: also sinamaya, a fine cloth, made from the avacá; and piña, which is a narrow cloth, made from the fibres of the pineapple; it is, deservedly, considered as one of the most beautiful fabrics in the world—is transparent, of a great variety of beautiful patterns, and equal in the fineness of its texture to cobweb-muslin. A large portion of the rice is exported to Canton by Americans, to save the measurement duty, or to Lintin