[16] See Jagor’s chapter (Reisen, pp. 309, 310) on the opium monopoly which was established in Filipinas on Jan. 1, 1844, and later continued by the Spanish government, after much discussion and controversy. Various arguments of policy, health, and morality were brought forward on both sides, but that which finally triumphed was evidently the one thus stated by the governor-general, “The revenue from opium is indispensable for our treasury.” The use of opium in the islands was intended for the Chinese residing there (being forbidder to the Indians and mestizos), and then only under certain restrictions; but Jagor found that, besides the 478 public opium-joints—which were “actual hotbeds of immorality, and always full of Chinese”—hundreds of individuals were allowed, contrary to the law and to the intentions of the government, to smoke opium in their own houses. The revenue from opium amounted in 1860 to 98,000 escudos; in the fiscal year of 1865–66, to 140,000; and in 1866–67, to 207,000. Montero y Vidal cites in Archipiélago filipino (published in 1886), the tariff schedule of 1874, “The importation of opium is prohibited; and only that will be allowed which, in small quantities, is destined for the pharmacies, and all that which may be imported by the lessees of the right to sell this drug to whom the Treasury has granted that exclusive right in the provinces there—in which case it will pay duty according to item 80” (that is, at eight per cent). [↑]
[17] A tree found in China (Stillingia sebifera), which yields a substance resembling tallow, which is used for the same purpose as the latter. [↑]
[18] Regarding the gutta-percha industry, see Official Handbook of the Philippines, pp. 91–95. [↑]
[19] The water supply of Manila is taken from the Mariquina River, eight miles from the city, being pumped thence to a reservoir halfway to Manila, from which it is distributed. “The works are owned by the municipality, having been largely paid for with a fund, the proceeds of a legacy, left by the will of a citizen, Francisco Carriedo, who died in 1743.” (Official Handbook, p. 269.) This was one of the obras pias founded by a public-spirited citizen, Francisco Carriedo y Peredo; he was born in the town of Santander in 1690, and died at the age of 53, “having during his life conferred immense benefits on Filipinas.” (Vindel, Catálogo, i, pp. 155, 156.) [↑]
[20] The botanical garden of Manila was created by Governor Norzagaray (by decree of Sept. 13, 1858); and, as a result of this, a royal decree of May 29, 1861, founded there a school o£ botany and agriculture, under the control of the governor of the islands and immediate supervision of the Economic Society. The locality called Campo de Arroceros [“the rice-dealers’ field”] was set apart as a botanical garden, for the practical work of that school, with approval of the expenditures incurred by the governor for the establishment of both institutions; and the sum of 6,000 pesos a year was allowed for their maintenance. (In 1894–95, the budget included for the expenses of these two establishments the sum of 37,294 pesos.) See Montero y Vidal, Hist. de Filipinas, iii, pp. 260, 261, 317, 318. [↑]
[21] Worcester says of the Ifugaos (ut supra, p. 829): “Their agriculture is little short of wonderful, and no one who has seen their dry stone dams, their irrigating ditches running for miles along precipitous hillsides and even crossing the faces of cliffs, and their irrigated terraces extending for thousands of feet up the mountain sides, can fail to be impressed (Pl. xxvi, xxxvii). When water must be carried across cliffs so hard and so broken that the Ifugaos cannot successfully work the stone with their simple tools, they construct and fasten in place great troughs made from the hollowed trunks of trees, and the same procedure is resorted to when cañons must be crossed, great ingenuity being displayed in building the necessary supporting trestle-work of timber. The nearly perpendicular walls of their rice paddies are usually built of stone, although near Quiangan, where the country is comparatively open and level, walls of clay answer the same purpose, and are used. The stone retaining walls are sometimes forty feet high, and so steep are the mountain sides that the level plots gained by building such walls and filling in behind them are often not more than twenty or thirty feet wide. I know of no more impressive example of primitive engineering than the terraced mountain sides of Nueva Vizcaya, beside which the terraced hills of Japan sink into insignificance.” [↑]