es 2,525 00

28,357 00
======== ==
P122,052 00

In the same year this province contributed to the common funds of
the Treasury a further sum of P133,009.

There was in each town another local tax called _Caja de Comunidad,_
contributed to by the townspeople to provide against any urgent
necessity of the community, but it found its way to Manila and was
misappropriated, like the _Fondos locales_.

There was not a peso at the disposal of the Provincial Governor for
local improvements. If a bridge broke down so it remained for years,
whilst thousands of travellers had to wade through the river unless
a raft were put there at the expense of the very poorest people by
order of the petty-governor of the nearest village. The "Tribunal,"
which served the double purpose of Town Hall and Dak Bungalow for
wayfarers, was often a hut of bamboo and palm-leaves, whilst others,
which had been decent buildings generations gone by, lapsed into
a wretched state of dilapidation. In some villages there was no
Tribunal at all, and the official business had to be transacted in
the municipal Governor's house. I first visited Calamba (La Laguna)
in 1880, and for 14 years, to my knowledge, the headmen had to meet
in a sugar-store in lieu of a Tribunal. In San Jose de Buenavista,
the capital town of Antique Province, the Town Hall was commenced in
good style and left half finished during 15 years. Either some one
for pity's sake, or the headmen for their own convenience, went to
the expense of thatching over half the unfinished structure, which
was therefore saved from entire ruin, whilst all but the stone walls
of the other half rotted away. So it continued until 1887, when the
Government authorized a partial restoration of this building.

As to the roads connecting the villages, quite 20 per cent. of them
serve only for travellers on foot, on horse or on buffalo back at
any time, and in the wet season certainly 60 per cent, of all the
Philippine highways are in too bad a state for any kind of passenger
conveyance to pass with safety. In the wet season, many times I
have made a sea journey in a prahu, simply because the highroad near
the coast had become a mud-track, for want of macadamized stone and
drainage, and only serviceable for transport by buffalo. In the dry