Minimum days of rain in February and March.
Dry Season: November to May, inclusive.
Wet Season: June to October, inclusive.
Typhoons: Frequent in July, August, September, and October.
The lowest average rainfall for the last twelve years for the whole Archipelago was 60.73 inches in the driest region, the highest, 125.68, in the wettest. Manila’s average was 75.46.
VI. The City of Manila
Entrance to Manila Bay You enter Manila Bay thru a narrow passage in the middle of which is the famous Island of Corregidor, the “Rock,” the “Gibraltar of the Far East,” the “Home of the Big Guns,” that guards the harbor. It is also a hydroplane station of the United States. The island is a stalwart sentinel, as it were, at the harbor’s mouth. Nearby are two other “watch dogs” of Uncle Sam, known as “El Fraile” and “El Carabao,” two other well fortified islands holding many a surprise for any invading fleet.
Down the bay your steamer glides amid the shipping of many nations and the launches of the customs and quarantine soon appear to “look the stranger over.”
MANILA.—After the quarantine and customs inspection you get off your steamer and you are in Manila, the capital of the Philippine Archipelago. Your first impressions are of the tourist sort. Your interest is immediately arrested by the dress and habits of the Filipinos, of the Chinese, and of the various residents from every quarter of the globe. The water buffalo or the carabao, the one horse carriage, or the carromata, and the slippers, or “chinelas,” worn in the streets by the poor will startle you to the realization that you are in a world other than your own. The every-day clothes worn by the people give you an ensemble of all the colors imaginable, more so when there is a procession, parade or similar festivities—royal purple, plum, heliotrope, magenta, psolferino, scarlet, geranium, salmon, pinks, greens, vivid and tender, all the blues, yellow, orange, champaca, in short every hue, shade, and tint that art has borrowed from nature or has invented.