harbour-master's office, and have to pick our steps through a dirty quarter of the town in order to reach the focus of public activity.
The river Pasig divides Manila Proper from its sister city of Binondo. Two handsome bridges, one an old-fashioned stone one, the other a modern suspension bridge of imposing dimensions, form the communication between the two cities. Manila, situate on the southern or left bank, and enclosed on all sides with ditches and fortifications, has all the peculiar features of a Spanish town of the ancient type. It consists of eight straight, narrow streets, all running in one direction. Within these are most of the public buildings; the Governor-general's Palace and that of the Archbishop, the Municipality, the Supreme Courts, the Cathedral, the Arsenal, the Barracks. Profound silence reigns in the grass-grown streets, between the gloomy masses of stone, of which at least one-third are Church property. There is no evidence anywhere of joyous life or social progress, and the variegated, charming flower-garden, lately laid out in the square in front of the Cathedral, stands out like a solitary gay picture, amid austere, sombre, historical paintings of vanished might and faded splendour. Within the walls of this melancholy old city only Spaniards and their descendants may dwell, all other races being excluded from this privilege. The number of inhabitants within the fortifications does not probably exceed 10,000 souls.
On the other hand, Binondo, on the northern or right bank of the river, is the true business city and head-quarters of
trade. Here Europeans, Chinese, Malays, and their endless intermixtures of blood, amounting in all to more than 140,000 souls, reside in the most perfect harmony with each other; here are all the warehouses, shops, and manufactories; here prevails from morning till night a perpetual whirl of busy, cheerful crowds circulating through the streets, of which that called the Escolta is the most frequented, as it is the handsomest and most attractive. The houses, on account of the frequency of earthquakes, are usually one storey high, enclosing large courts (patios), and very frequently with a sort of terrace on the roof. The interiors of the houses have an unusually spacious appearance, owing to their almost universally having but little furniture, in many cases simply a number of chairs ranged along the walls. But the most singular aspect of these houses is to be found in the windows, the panes of most of them being made, not of glass, but of the shell of a species of oyster (Placuna Placenta), ground down to the requisite thinness! The subdued light which is thus obtained is exceedingly grateful, and these mussel-shells have been found to be cheaper and more lasting than panes of glass, which, in a country so frequently visited by earthquakes and hurricanes, could only be replaced when injured at an immense expense. The streets are rather narrow, so much so that linen awnings are stretched across the streets from one row of shops to that opposite, thus securing to the foot-passenger the inestimable boon of being able during the hottest hours of the day to traverse almost every street in Binondo under shade.
That which the stranger understands by the emphatic word "comfort" is only to be found in the houses of European residents, and is not obtainable by money. The two hotels lately started to levy, unchallenged, Californian prices for even the most moderate requirements, and so far as cleanliness and orderliness are concerned, lag far behind the commonest country inn in North America or the British colonies.[75]
Despite the various races that meet the stranger's gaze, Manila has, beyond any other colony in the East, the appearance of a European town. One remarks here, that the colonists are more completely amalgamated with the natives, and that with the religion these latter have also adopted a considerable proportion of the customs of Europeans.
Among the populace of Manila belonging to the coloured races, that most prevalent in the capital is the Tagal, or Tagalag, on whose territory the Spaniards founded their first settlement. The obscurity that envelopes their origin has never been dispelled, although some of the older religious writers thought they found on Borneo and other islands of the Sunda Archipelago some traces of their stock. They were confirmed in this impression by the fact, that in the
most cultivated dialects and idioms of the Tagal is to be found an unusually great number of Malay and Javanese words. The majority of the plants cultivated here, such as rice, sugar-cane, yam, indigo, cocoa-palm, as also all domestic animals, many of the metals, and even the digits used in enumeration, are, although greatly corrupted, directly traceable to the corresponding words or names in Malay. Moreover, there is a tradition very prevalent throughout Luzon, that the Spaniards, at their first arrival in this Archipelago, found certain Bornese officials here, who were levying taxes and tithes for the Rajahs resident in that island.
Next in number to the Tagals rank the Chinese with their descendants, and to these succeed the Spaniards, with their offspring born in the country, who amount together to barely 5000, or about a 28th of the whole population of the capital; of Spaniards of pure descent, there are not above 300 in Manila.[76]