known. It is said to possess gold mines and hot springs; but whatever natural resources it may have will now in all probability be drawn forth, as the industrious and ingenious Cochin-Chinese have of late years begun to colonize its coasts. The rest of the Philippines are usually known as the Spanish islands, but some are only partially colonized by that people, and others, like Mindanao, are entirely independent; while none are at present of much commercial importance but Luzon, the most northerly with the exception of the small Babuyan islands.

Luzon is a large and irregularly-shaped island, estimated at four hundred miles in length, by an average breadth of one hundred and fifteen. In the interior it is a wild and mountainous country, exhibiting in its conformation the agency of subterranean fire, from which it still suffers in earthquakes and the eruptions of volcanos. In the recesses of these mountains, the oriental negroes, in their most degenerate state, are sometimes caught like wild beasts, and are described as "woolly-headed pigmies," roosting like birds upon the trees of the forest. Of the other tribes, who possessed the country before the arrival of the Spaniards, some are more or less civilized, and some are nominally Christians; but others still defy the power of the Europeans among the fastnesses of their native soil. In general, however, the character of the inhabitants is softness and timidity, and it is in this principal island of Spain that the capture of slaves is found easiest and safest by the pirates of the Archipelago. Some travellers are of a different opinion, and La Perouse describes the natives as being in no respect inferior to Europeans, but the well-known fact we have mentioned tells against his testimony.

Manilla, the capital, stands in an angle of a bay, where the sides sloping down to the sea, although almost untouched by the hand of man, present an appearance of the richest cultivation. Even the mountains beyond are covered with verdure to the summits. The city is surrounded by a moat and towers, and may contain a population of one hundred thousand, including four or five thousand Europeans. The Spaniards are far more merciful in their colonial policy than either the Portuguese or the Dutch, but till recently they have been still more severe in their commercial restrictions than the latter people. They would permit no foreign nation to share in the treasures of the Philippines, and confined the trade to a single galleon in the year, voyaging between Manilla, Mexico, and South America. For this reason a port situated so favourably for trade, both with the New World and the Old, has as yet attained to comparatively little distinction; but the events of the late European war have destroyed this absurd system, and the ships of all nations are now admitted into the ports of the Philippines. The principal articles of export are sugar, hemp, indigo, cigars, cotton, coffee, rice, saffron-wood, mother of pearl, hides, ebony, and gold dust; and the imports, cloths, iron, hardware, furniture, fire-arms, and ammunition.

CHAPTER V.

GENERAL VIEW OF THE PRODUCTIONS, COMMERCE AND MANNERS OF THE ARCHIPELAGO-THE COASTS OF CAMBODIA AND COCHIN CHINA.

In passing thus lightly through the Archipelago, we have mentioned incidentally some of its more remarkable productions, and occasionally indicated the kind of traffick in which the natives are employed; but it will perhaps be considered of some utility if we now bestow a general glance upon the resources and trade of the islands, and upon the character and prospects of their inhabitants.

"The agriculture of the Indian islands," says Crawford, "is unquestionably more rich and various than that of any other portion of the globe;" and he adds, what must have already suggested itself to the reader, that some of its most remarkable productions are found nowhere else, and that in all probability no other country is capable of producing them. The climate here, as in other intertropical regions, is divided into two seasons,

the wet and the dry; the one the period of germination, the other that of fructification,-in fact (for the laws of nature are only modified, not changed, in different latitudes), the spring and autumn of Europe. But as the sun has always sufficient power to influence vegetation, and as some showers fall at all seasons, there are plants that grow indiscriminately throughout the year; and in those places where there are alternate mountains and plains, the one to attract the fertilizing moisture, and the other to receive and retain it, two distinct crops are frequently raised in one year. The soil, it needs hardly be said, has an equal share of responsibility. Wherever the geological formation is secondary trap-rock, the land is fertile in vegetation; while the granitic and other primary formations indicate a meagre flora, but wealth in the mineral kingdom. In Java, for instance, where metals are almost unknown, and precious stones wholly so, the soil is the richest in the world, the mould being ten or twelve feet deep in the plains at the foot of the mountains-and not unfrequently, it is said, fifty feet deep.

Rice, wherever the soil is capable of producing it, is the grand staple. Sometimes a wild crop is snatched from the forest lands, prepared by merely burning the trees and rank grass; in other places this eastern breadcorn depends upon the sun and casual showers; in others it is flooded by the periodical rains; and in others still it is subjected at will to artificial irrigation. The two last are wet crops, and yield six times more than the dry. The fields on which they grow are usually small areas closely diked round, so as to form a marsh, if not a pond, during the floods; but the slopes of the mountains, likewise profusely irrigated by the streams and rills being dammed up as they descend, are laid out in terrace above terrace, covered with the golden harvest, which far excels

in beauty and richness all other cereal crops. In Java, under favourable circumstances, an English acre was found to produce six hundred and forty-one pounds avoirdupoise of clean grain besides a green crop.

Among these islands, maize is the next grain in importance to rice, and is supposed to have been cultivated there before the discovery of America. It grows anywhere, and under almost any circumstances; but is reckoned by the natives an inferior food, answering to the barley or oats of Europe. It yields on an average about one hundred fold; but in the rare cases where good lands are assigned to it, this has been known to increase to four or five hundred fold.

Sago, although the pith of a tree, is the bread of the islanders. The trunk is used as timber for various purposes; the leaf for thatch; the bran, or refuse of the pith, for feeding hogs; and when thrown into heaps it generates both an animal and a vegetable delicacy—an exquisite mushroom, and a worm palatable even to European taste.

Various kinds of pulse are grown as green crops, in succession to marsh rice; one being chiefly used by the Chinese in the manufacture of soy.

The yam, which appears to be indigenous here as well as in America, sometimes grows to the weight of forty or fifty pounds, but is little esteemed as food where grain of any kind can be had. The sweet potato is sometimes found of equal size, although the usual weight is only a few pounds; and the common American potato grows indiscriminately at all seasons of the year, but at an elevation not less than four thousand feet above the sea. In the same high lands, wheat and almost all the European vegetables are raised with ease. The capsicum is a universal condiment, and next to salt itself as a neces