Ilo-ilo is open to foreign commerce, and vice-consuls of many nations reside there. Yet the port has neither wharves, cranes, moorings or lights. The coasting steamers drawing up to 13 feet enter a muddy creek and discharge their cargo on the banks as best they can, whilst the ocean-going ships lie out in the bay and receive their cargoes of sugar and other produce from lighters, upon each of which pilotage used to be charged for the benefit of an unnecessary number of pilots, and of the captain of the port, who received a share of the pilotage and strenuously resisted a reform of this abuse.
Under American protection, Ilo-ilo may be expected to become a flourishing port, provided with every convenience for discharging, loading, and repairing ships, as becomes the importance of its trade. The town of Ilo-ilo contained many large buildings, some of them owned by British subjects. During the fighting last year, however, several buildings were burnt.
During the Spanish rule the streets were entirely uncared for, being a series of mud-holes in the rainy season, and thick with dust and garbage in the dry season.
The town and port together are notorious examples of all the worst characteristics of Spanish rule.
The principal towns of this wealthy province are Pototan, Santa Barbara, Janiuay, and Cabatuan, each of which has more than 20,000 inhabitants.
The industries and productions of this and the other islands are treated of under Visayas when describing the inhabitants.
Negros.—A long island of irregular shape, lying between Panay and Cebú. Its axis is nearly north and south, and a chain of mountains runs up it, but nearer to the east than to the west coast.
A little to the north of the centre of this chain, the celebrated volcano Canlaon raises its peak over 8300 feet. It is frequently in active eruption, and can be perceived at an immense distance when the atmosphere is clear. I have seen it and its long plume of vapour from a steamer when passing the north of the island.
In the Sierra de Dumaguete, a range occupying the centre of the southern promontory of the island, and about the centre of the range, there is the volcano of Bacon, about which little is known.
Cebú is a long and narrow island something in the shape of an alligator, looked at from above, with the snout pointing to the southward and westward. It is opposite to Negros, and separated from that island by the Strait of Tanon. It is, in fact, a range of mountains rising out of the sea, and is very narrow, being nowhere more than 22 miles wide. There being a large population of Visayas, and the mountains not being very high, the wandering heathen have to a great extent been weeded out, and only a remnant of wretched Mundos remain about the crests of the cordillera.