Apathy of the Authorities. 309 



Passports, which are absolutely necessary in Manila to 

 make tlie very shortest excursion into the interior, are given 

 with the utmost alacrity to strangers, without any one thence- 

 forward paying the slightest attention to enabling any expe- 

 dition to carry out its objects. This cold, utterly in- 

 different 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 com- 

 merce 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 tlu-ough the St. Domingo gate to 

 the subm'b of Binondo, on the N.E. side of the inner city, 

 we traverse what is called the Isthmus, a narrow strip of 



and dumbfounded that he could not utter a word. The followang day the American, 

 who had only taken it by way of joke, re1:urned the costly bauble to the agonized 

 Spaniard, but took occasion in so doing to remark that he now knew what was 

 meant by Spanish courtesy. 



