1S42.J population. 449 



the charter of 1571. Prom the river, there are a number of 

 side cuts diverging in every direction, that extend op into 

 the town and suburbs, like the canals of Venice, which serve 

 instead of streets, and are constantly filled with bancas, or 

 small boats, plying to and fro, from one quarter of the city to 

 the other. 



Outside the walls, and beyond the suburbs, are fine car- 

 riage drives, bordered with rice-grounds and cotton planta- 

 tions, with wide-spreading fields covered with the fragrant 

 coffee-bush, with clumps of graceful cocoas, whose long 

 branches bend with the weight of the ripening fruit, with 

 gardens blooming with flowers and redolent of perfume, and 

 with beautiful groves, where the areca,* the mango, and the 

 orange, mingle their branches lovingly together, and 



" The tamarind from the dew 

 Sheathes its young fruit, yet green." 



Within the limits of the city-proper, there are only twelve 

 or fourteen thousand inhabitants ; but the total population, 

 inclusive of all the suburbs, is estimated at about one hun- 

 dred and fifty thousand, much the larger proportion of whom 

 are Tag-a/as, or natives, who belong to the Malay race. With 

 these are intermingled perhaps five thousand Spaniards and 

 other Europeans, great numbers of Chinese, Malays, Papuan 

 negroes, and the motlev descendants of all the different races. 



CD * *> 



The Spanish residents have given the tone and character to the 

 society, and the higher classes spend their time nearly in the 

 same manner as those occupying a similar position in the 

 towns of old Spain. The men transact a little business, it 

 may be, in the morning, while their wives are engaged at their 

 toilets, or sleeping or lolling at borne. After dinner, both sexes 

 resort to the prado, for a drive or a promenade, amid the groups 

 of smokers and gamblers who may always be seen lounging 

 there ; and the evening is spent at the gay tertulia, with its 

 guitars, its dances and dulces, its wines and lemonade. 



* The fruit of the areca is the betel nut, which is quite generally chewed by 

 the natives in the East Indies, with the leaf of the pepper-betel, and lim^ 



