he medicine
killed him.

Within the tropics lengthened residence is the most essential
qualification in a medical attendant, as although old men may not be
so well up to the latest improvements of the science as those fresh
from college, yet they have from practice found out the best way of
treating tropical diseases, to which the treatment applicable in a
London, Edinburgh, or Paris hospital in similar cases, would be quite
out of place when practised in so different a climate as the tropics,
where the symptoms vary and succeed each other with ten times the
rapidity they do in Europe.

CHAPTER XVI.

Before leaving Manilla on a lengthened country excursion, it is always
desirable to procure introductions to the priests of the district you
are going to visit, which may be effected with very little difficulty
by almost any of your Spanish acquaintances. As although they are
in general a most hospitable class of men, and usually invite any
respectable looking European whom chance may throw in their way, to
sleep at the convento if he be passing the night at their village,
yet without an introduction one remains always a stranger to them,
and sees nothing of their usual habits or modes of life.

Sometimes their good-nature is put to a trial by the eccentricities
of their British guests, and some odd incidents happen. A good story
is told of one of the former British merchants of the place, who
having taken it into his head to make an excursion, before starting
provided himself with letters of recommendation from the Archbishop
of Manilla, to whom he paid court by loans of newspapers, addressed
to the parish priests, and set off with these in his pocket, finding
them of the greatest service in insuring a welcome wherever he went,
being described therein in the most favourable colours, by the high
church dignitary.

One day, after a long and fatiguing ride, he arrived, about two in the
afternoon, in a very ravenous state, at a convent or parsonage. On
ascending the stairs of the convento, the first thing which met the
eyes of the hungry traveller was a table neatly arranged for the
padre's dinner, who, he was informed by the servants, would be back
in about an hour to dine. An hour still--why it seemed to be a century
since he had broken his fast; however, he waited for what appeared to a
hungry man to be a long time, but in reality was probably ten minutes,
when, losing all patience at the non-appearance of th