III.] MANILA HEMP. 61 



]\Ialay, and Sulu with perfect fluency, and was tolerably well 

 acquainted with Bisaya and French. It was amusing to see his 

 easy familiarity with the Sultan, and how he was called in to quiet 

 the domestic jars among the beauties of the harem. 



I have rarely seen better soil than that of Lukut Lapas. The 

 lanook, or so-called IManila hemp {Musa tcxtilis), was growing with 

 wonderful luxuriance. It is a plant closely resembling the banana 

 in appearance, but of a darker green, and its cultivation is almost 

 exclusively confined to the southern islands of the Philippines. 

 The fibre is of considerable value, being very strong and flexible, 

 and but for the fact that the tree is said not to flourish out of the 

 latitudes above named, it is extraordinary that it should not 

 hitherto have been more cultivated. Like the banana, the lanook 

 is trunkless, its spurious stem being formed by layers of the 

 ensheathing petioles. As the older stems, wdiich are the chief 

 source of the fibre, are cut down, new suckers spring up with great 

 rapidity from the parent root. The fibre is separated by scraping 

 away the pulp with a blunt knife or piece of hoop-iron, and after a 

 certain amount of preparation, is sorted according to its fineness, 

 the coarser quality being made into cordage, the finer spun into a 

 substance which, in the Philippines, is woven with silk or cotton 

 to make dress fabrics. Exported, it is chiefly used in the manufac- 

 ture of paper. The coffee plantation was by no means so flourishing 

 as the lanook. The trees were affected by mould, and with a leaf 

 disease very similar to, if not actually identical with that produced 

 by the Hemileia vastatrix in Ceylon and other countries. It is 

 doubtful whether Sulu is adapted for coffee-growdng. It was only 

 to be expected that the Coffea arahica — the sole kind that Captain 

 Schlick had tried — would prove a failure, but it is possible that 

 the Liberian variety, which has succeeded well at low elevations 

 in Ceylon, might also do so here. Cacao and tapioca were the 

 only other vegetable products grown. The former was doing 

 extremely well. The tree, which was introduced into the Philippines 

 by the Spaniards in the middle of the seventeenth century, appears 



