off
by the typhoons, terrible storms which come with a twisting motion as if
rising from the earth or the sea, fairly pulling everything detachable
after them. Masts of ships and roofs of houses are frequently carried by
these hurricanes miles distant. The better to resist the typhoons, most
of the light native houses are built on bamboo poles, which allow the
wind to pass freely under them, and sway and bend in the storm like a
tree; whereas, if they were set solidly on the earth, they would be
lifted up bodily and carried away. Glass windows being too frail to
resist the shaking of the earthquakes and the typhoons, small,
translucent oyster shells are used instead. The light thus admitted
resembles that passing through ground-glass, or, rather, stained glass,
for the coloring in the shells imparts a mellow tinted radiance like the
windows of a cathedral.

[Illustration: A POPULAR STREET CONVEYANCE.

As elsewhere, carriages and street cars are used in Manila, but there
are hundreds of the above "native cabs," for carrying single persons
short distances, and they are liberally patronized.]

MANILA AS A BUSINESS CENTER.

The streets of Manila are wretchedly paved or not paved at all, and as
late as 1893 were lighted by kerosene lamps or by wicks suspended in
dishes of cocoanut oil. Lately an electric plant has been introduced,
and parts of the city are lighted in this manner. There are two lines of
street cars in Manila. The motive power for a car is a single small
pony, and foreigners marvel to see one of those little animals drawing
thirty-odd people.

The retail trade and petty banking of Manila is almost entirely in the
hands of the half-castes and Chinese, and many of them have grown
immensely wealthy. There are only about three hundred Europeans in
business in the whole Philippine group, and they conduct the bulk of the
importing and exporting trade. Manila contains a number of large cigar
and cigarette factories, one of which employs 10,000 hands. There is
also a sugar refinery, a steam rice mill, and a rope factory worked
partly by men and partly by oxen, a Spanish brewery and a German cement
factory, a Swiss umbrella factory and a Swiss hat factory. The single
cotton mill, in which $200,000 of English capital is invested, runs
6,000 spindles.

The statistics of 1897 show that the whole trade of Manila comprised
only forty-five Spanish, nineteen German, and seventeen English firms,
with six Swiss broker