To face p. 161.
In former years large frigates have been built, armed, and fitted out at Cavite and other ports, but at present the ship-building industry is in decadence, and the shipwrights capable of directing so important a job have died out. The increasing scarcity and high price of timber is now a difficulty, and sailing vessels are in little demand. Small steamers and launches are now built, but larger steamers are ordered from Hong Kong or Singapore, or, in case of vessels well able to make the passage, the order goes to England.
The native craft called lorchas, pailebotes, pontines, barotos, paraos, cascos, guilálos, barangayanes, bangcas, vintas and salisipanes are still built in large numbers. The last are very light and fast craft used by the Moros on their piratical expeditions.
Engines and boilers for steam launches are made in Manila, church bells are cast of a considerable size; iron castings are also made.
Amongst the miscellaneous articles manufactured are all sorts of household furniture, fireworks and lanterns. Dentists, painters, sculptors and photographers all practise their trades.
There is no doubt that the Filipinos have learnt a certain amount from the Spaniards as regards their manufactures; but, on careful consideration, I think they have learnt more from the Chinese. Their first sugar-mills were Chinese and had granite rollers, and from them they learnt the trick that many a moulder might not know, of casting their sugar-pans in a red-hot mould and cooling slowly and so getting the metal extremely thin yet free from defects. The casting of brass cannon and of church bells has been learnt from them, and doubtless they taught the Igorrotes how to reduce the copper ores and to refine that metal. Again, the breeding of fish, an important business near Manila, and the manufacture of salt round about Bacoor comes from them. I am not sure whether the hand-loom in general use is of the Chinese pattern, but I think so.
Distilling the nipa juice is certainly a Chinese industry, as also the preparation of sugar for export. This is done in establishments called farderias, and is necessary for all sugar made in pilones or moulds. The procedure is described under the head of Pampangos, and an illustration is given of the process of drying the sugar on mats in the sun.
Many native men and women and numbers of Chinese coolies are employed in Manila, Ilo-ilo, and Cebú in preparing produce for shipment.
The hemp used to come up from the provinces loose or merely twisted into rolls to be pressed into bales at the shipping ports, but of late years several presses have been erected at the hemp ports in Southern Luzon and on the smaller islands.