Yacal, for beams and joists of houses, &c., and a tall, straight wood, called Palo Maria, is valuable for supplying spars, &c., to the shipping of the colony.
Baticulin, for cutting up into boards or deals.
Dungo unites strength and solidity to an immense size.
Teak is found in Zamboanga, and its value is too well known to require any remark upon it.
Ypil is brought to Manilla from Yloylo, and being a very lasting and hard timber, is of the greatest value, and is applied to a variety of uses.
These are some of the many species of woods abounding in the country, whose number and value are yearly increasing as they become better known to the foreign timber merchants of China and elsewhere. The China market alone would take off greatly increased supplies, were they allowed to ship the timber from the ports next to where the woodman’s axe had felled the tree, in place of forcing it to bear all the heavy charges which its transport to Manilla in the first instance now subjects it to.
The investigations of Don Rafael Arenao have been of great service to me in forming a list of these; and for several other particulars scattered throughout the preceding pages I have to thank him.
CHAPTER XXXIV.
The money current in the Philippines consists of Spanish and South American dollar pieces principally, although no two of them have precisely the same weight in silver. Thus the Chilian dollar of 1833 had 456·24 grains of pure metal, while that of the Rio de la Plata has only 441·24 grains of silver.
Nearly all the Mexican dollars differ in their quantity of pure silver; for example, that of the coinage of 1832 had only 442·80, while that of 1833 had 451·20 grains of pure metal. The old Spanish dollar has 445·08 grains of pure silver, and the half dollar 222·48 grains; while the Bolivian half dollar has only 168·60 grains of pure silver; and the Bolivian quarter-dollar piece has only 84·84 grains of pure silver; while the standard Spanish quarter-piece contains 111·24 grains of unalloyed silver.