Passports, which are absolutely necessary in Manila to make the very shortest excursion into the interior, are given with the utmost alacrity to strangers, without any one thenceforward paying the slightest attention to enabling any expedition to carry out its objects. This cold, utterly indifferent treatment was doubly felt by travellers fresh from Batavia, where they had been overwhelmed with every sort of attention.
In the office of the Captain-general we saw several large sheets of printed matter in columns, suspended on the walls, which we presumed were the annual statistics of the commerce of the Archipelago, and accordingly requested one of the officials to provide us with one. It was only when unfolding a little later the documents which had been so readily given to us that we discovered our error, and became aware that these tables printed with such care and elegance did not in any way refer to what we had supposed, but were the statistics of the various monasteries, and their inhabitant brethren throughout the Philippines. We had far greater trouble and difficulty ere we could get at the particulars of the natural productions and state of trade of Manila.
When the visitor passes through the St. Domingo gate to the suburb of Binondo, on the N.E. side of the inner city, we traverse what is called the Isthmus, a narrow strip of
meadow-land, surrounded by water on both sides, on which has been erected within these few years a simple monument in honour of Magelhaens, the discoverer of the Philippines, who, wounded by a native with a poisoned arrow, breathed his last, 15th April, 1521, on the small island of Mactan, lying opposite Cebu. A Doric column of black marble, 76 feet high, with inscriptions engraven on the four sides of the pedestal, lifts its head here since 1854,[89] and is altogether a more appropriate monument than that which the Spaniards erected at Havanna to the greatest navigator of any age, Christopher Columbus, to whom they owe all their after power and greatness, on the spot where his ashes reposed for many a long year in the cathedral before they were conveyed back to Spain. A poor insignificant votive tablet, built into a recess near the altar, is all that intimates that there once reposed there for a season the mortal remains of the man who, to use the words of a German poet, "bestowed on the world another world."[90]
On this isthmus are situated the most delightful pleasure grounds in Manila; the esplanade, with its simple, shady walks, and benches on which to repose, and further on, nearer the sea on the left bank of the river, the "Calzada" dam (causeway). Hither every evening comes the gay
world of Manila, in long rows of carriages, to be fanned by the delicious cool sea-breeze. Arrived at the farther extremity of the promenade, the coachman, resplendent in gorgeous livery and large shining top-boots, for he does not drive from the box but rides postilion, is usually ordered to stop, and the gentlemen leave the carriage in order to chat with the ladies in the surrounding vehicles, just as we accost our fair friends in the theatre, and pay our visits in the boxes. For in Manila there are neither theatres nor concert-rooms, and the public promenade is therefore the only rendezvous of the "beau monde."
Unfortunately we reached Manila in the height of the rainy season, when even the attractiveness of nature can only be guessed at by occasional glimpses, and the delightful outdoor life which enlivens the streets and the front porch of the private residences of the inhabitants, is utterly arrested. Here, as in Batavia, the tropical rains fall with a violence of which a native of the northern climates, who has never lived in the tropics, and knows only the rainfall of his own country, can hardly form any conception. In July, 1857, it rained here for fourteen days uninterruptedly, so that the Pasig overflowed its banks, and people were ferried about the streets of Manila, as in the city of Lagoons, by means of small boats, called here bancas. This inundation was converted into a merry-making, and visits were paid on all sides in elegant little boats.
The one sole amusement with which even the rainy season
cannot interfere, is cock-fighting. So soon as the bad weather has fairly set in, universal recourse is had to this, the most popular of amusements, whose cruel, murderous issue is strangely in contrast with the mild, soft, timid character of the natives. These "Gallos," as they are called, are a monopoly of Government, that is to say, they can only be held with their permission, and upon payment of a fee for such license. The revenue which Government derives from this anything but civilized amusement is very considerable,[91] and the fee paid by the owners of the cocks and the spectators is at any rate the least objectionable part of the spectacle, for far larger sums are lost in the betting. What cards and hazard are for blasée Europe, cock-fighting is for the simple native of Manila. Such is their passionate excitement, that several days elapse before their ordinary apathy subsides into its state of chronic contentment. It is singular that, with the exception of the Spaniards and the mixed race founded by them in various distant parts of the world, there is not now one single civilized nation that can find any pleasure in such brutal amusements as cock-fights and bull-fights.