348 Voyage of the Novara. 



accompanied by the guitar. We had a slight foretaste of the 

 joviality which must prevail in Manila during the delicious 

 summer evenings from the joyous disposition manifested by 

 the various Tagal families, even during the wet season, when 

 the almost incessant rain, and the swampy state of the streets, 

 compelled the natives to remain crowded in the narrow rooms 

 of their poor little huts. In St. Miguel, a hamlet in the im- 

 mediate neighbourhood of Manila, with a number of country- 

 seats of wealthy foreigners and natives, we repeatedly heard 

 the sweet plaintive notes of the native women singing Tagal 

 ditties, which for pathos and thrilling tenderness surpassed 

 all we had hitherto heard or read of the talents of the colour- 

 ed races for song and melody. We shall be able in the 

 Appendix to give the notes of a very characteristic melody, 

 the words of which form a very favom-ite popular song 

 (Condiman), which we ultimately succeeded in taking down 

 through the kindness of Senor Balthasar Girandier of 

 Manila. 



It was at San Miguel that we had not alone the most 

 agreeable, but also the most melancholy, experience of our 

 entire stay in the capital of the Philippines. On an island 

 opposite the handsome, beautifully situate residence of our 

 hospitable friend Mr. Steffan, the Bremen Consul, is the Poor- 

 house, in which the insane as well as the sick are confined toge- 

 ther, the whole being, like all the other humane institutions of 

 Manila, under the superintendence of an ecclesiastic, m the 

 present case a Mestizo. It appeared there was no proper or 



