fewer exactions, foreigners, as a
rule, seem to agree better with the natives than Spaniards. Of these
exactions, the bitterest complaints are rife of the injustice of the
demands made upon the lower classes in the settlement of their wages;
which, if they do not immediately find the necessary hands for every
employment, do not correspond with the enhanced value of the products;
and, according to them, the natives must even be driven from public
employments, to labor in their service. [138]

[The Filipino as a laborer.] The Filipino certainly is more independent
than the European laborer, because he has fewer wants and, as a native
landowner, is not compelled to earn his bread as the daily laborer of
another; yet, with reference to wages, it may be questioned whether
any colony whatever offers more favorable conditions to the planter
than the Philippines. In Dutch India, where the prevalence of monopoly
almost excludes private industry, free laborers obtain one-third of a
guilder--somewhat more than one real, the usual wages in the wealthy
provinces of the Philippines (in the poorer it amounts to only the
half); and the Javanese are not the equals of the Filipinos, either
in strength, or intelligence, or skill; and the rate of wages in all
the older Slave States is well known. For the cultivation of sugar and
coffee, Mauritius and Ceylon are obliged to import foreign laborers
at great expense, and to pay them highly; and yet they are successful.

[Pasacao.] From Quitang to Pasacao the road was far worse than
it had heretofore been; and this is the most important road in
the province! Before reaching Pasacao, evident signs are visible,
on the denuded sides of the limestone, of its having been formerly
washed by the sea. Pasacao is picturesquely situated at the end of the
valley which is intersected by the Itulan, and extends from Pamplona,
between wooded mountains of limestone, as far as the sea. The ebb tides
here are extremely irregular. From noon to evening no difference was
observable, and, when the decrease just became visible, the tide rose
again. Immediately to the south, and facing the district, the side of a
mountain, two thousand feet high and above one thousand feet broad, had
two years ago given way to the subterranean action of the waves. The
rock consists of a tough calcareous breccia, full of fragments of
mussels and corals; but, being shoeless, I could not remain on the
sharp rock sufficiently long to m