240 
MANILLA. 
at the door of the gallery with a rattan in her hand, and allows 
thirty girls to enter, counting them off as they come in. When the 
thirty have passed, they go up to their respective examiners, and 
having freed their long black hair, hold it in their hands at arm’s 
length ; they then shake their handkerchiefs and loosen the other 
parts of their dress, and suffer the examiners to pass their hands 
over their bodies to ascertain if any tobacco be concealed close to 
their persons. In this manner successive parties are searched, till 
all the girls have undergone the examination. The examiners then 
rise, and in the same way examine each other. 
The government monopolizes the sale of tobacco, and, to keep 
up its price, is said to destroy the extra produce of a very fertile 
season. 
The suburbs of Manilla are principally composed of houses built, 
in the native manner, of matted bamboo for the walls, and the leaves 
of the palm for the roofs, mingled with houses of stone, with churches 
and convents. The bamboo dwellings are inhabited by the mulattos, 
called mestis, natives and Chinese, all of whom, especially the 
mulattos and Chinese, are the tradesmen of the place. None of 
them stand very high for honesty, but the Chinese maintain their 
character for pre-eminence in cheating. * 
The Chinese are charged with various crimes, are watched with 
much suspicion by the government, and are as cordially hated by 
the natives of Luconia as by the Javanese. They at least have 
their share of punishment. Two of them, and a native, were 
executed for the crime of murder during our visit at Manilla. 
The malefactors were strangled by a method peculiar and frightful. 
* It is but justice to make an exception in favour of some of the mulatto women, who 
are said to be the chief negociants of Manilla, and yet give no other security tor their 
purchases than their words, for a credit of two years. The author of the Voyage aux 
Indes Orientales states, that he has known a mulatto woman furnished with merchandize 
to the amount of two hundred thousand dollars, with no other security than a verbal 
promise, which she has kept with the utmost fidelity. — Vol. II. p. 347- 
