The average shade temperature of Manila all the year round is 83° Fahrenheit. The highest I have ever seen there was 96°, at 2 P.M. in May, and the lowest 68°, at 6 A.M. in December.

The temperature of the sea-water on the shore at Malate is usually 82°, and that of well-water about the same. The water-pipes from the reservoir at San Juan del Monte are not buried, but are carried on an embankment. They are partly shaded from the sun by clumps of bamboos, but on a hot afternoon the water sometimes attains a temperature of 90°.

Those figures are high, yet the heat is mitigated by the sea-breeze, and the nights are usually cool enough to allow a refreshing sleep.

The climate of Manila is not harmful to the constitutions of healthy Europeans or Americans between twenty and fifty years of age, provided they at once adopt a mode of life suitable to the country, and in clothing, diet, habits and recreations, adapt themselves to the new conditions. On the other hand, I apprehend that, for persons of either sex over fifty who have had no previous experience of life in the tropics, there will be great difficulty in acclimatising themselves, and the mortality amongst such will be abnormal. Ladies’ complexions will not suffer more than if they lived in a steam-heated house in Harlem, New York.

In all this part of the world the weather depends upon the monsoons. These blow with great regularity over the ocean, six months from the north-east and six months from the south-west. Their action on any particular place is, however, modified by the situation of mountains with regard to that place. The changes of the monsoon occur in April—May and October—November. It is the south-west monsoon that brings rain to Manila, and it has a fine stretch of the China Sea to career over, all the way, in fact, from the shores of Sumatra, till it drives the billows tumbling and foaming into the bay.

The typhoons form far out in the Pacific near the region of the Western Carolines, and, whirling round the opposite way to the hands of a watch, they proceed on a curve that may strike Luzon, or, perhaps, go on for a thousand miles or more, and carry death and destruction to the fishermen of Fo Kien or Japan.

When a typhoon passes clear, the usual result is several days of continuous heavy rain, but the air is cleared and purified. But should the vortex of the cyclone pass over your residence, you will not be likely to forget it for the rest of your life.

The year in Manila may be roughly divided into three seasons:—

May is the terrible month of the year, the month of fevers and funerals. Let all who can, leave Manila before this month arrives.