58 
COMPENDIUM OF GEOGRAPHY AND TRAVEL 
ment for the year 1889 by over £1,000,000 sterling. 
The variation in price of this -article is enormous. Sugar 
is the export next on the list in point of importance, 
Panay being the principal island upon which it is grown, 
although it is also cultivated largely in Luzon and Zebu. 
Of late, owing to the fall in price and the manipulation 
of the American market, this produce has been much dis¬ 
couraged, and from a value of £2,600,000 in 1880 
the total shipments of 1890 were only estimated at 
£1,330,000, which was not far short of a million less 
than the value of the 1889 crop. Much of this short¬ 
coming may, however, be explained by a severe plague of 
locusts, but the decrease in the export of many other 
products cannot be thus accounted for. Thus indigo fell 
from 354,500 lbs. to 37,400 lbs. in 1890, and sapan 
wood from 5000 tons to 2800 tons in the same year. 
Coffee, another export of importance, has suffered from 
the ravages of an insect which attacks the heart of the 
tree and kills it, and the 1890 shipments were only to 
the value of £420,000—less by £80,000 than those of 
the preceding year. Other articles of export are hides, 
mother-of-pearl, gum-mastic, and the perfume ylang-ylang 
from the plant Uvaria ciromatica . This is worth £9 per 
lb. in the Paris market, and has been a good deal planted 
lately in Luzon and Sulu Island. 
The tobacco culture of the Philippines demands a 
separate word. The policy of Spain in the islands has 
always been that of monopolies. Little by little she has 
had to relinquish them. The last to fall, in July, 1882, 
was that of tobacco. First instituted by Governor Basco 
in 1780, it has always been productive of difficulties. 
The enforced culture of the plant in the chief tobacco 
districts entailed great hardship on the natives, who 
were unable to work their rice crops at the same time; 
