ree from work and at
liberty on Sunday.

The _Diario_ has a large circulation in Manilla and the different
provinces of the islands, besides having agents at Madrid, Cadiz,
and Paris; it is also obtainable in the Havana, at Hongkong, and
at Singapore.

The subscription is one dollar a month, which is moderate enough;
and advertisements are inserted in its columns without charge.

Once a week it includes a list of the shipping in the harbour, and
also of the arrivals and departures, and reports every morning the
arrivals and cargoes of any vessels that have come in on the previous
day from the provinces. It also publishes a weekly price-current of
the produce of the country.

A well-conducted periodical of this nature is of great importance in a
commercial point of view, not only from the advertisements circulated
by its means throughout the Philippines, but from the variety of
facts and information which the country alcaldes address to the
Manilla Government, in which they are required to give a list of the
prices-current for the various articles of produce grown in their
different provinces; a regulation which, of course, tends to keep
the trade on a sound footing, and to prevent reckless speculation,
which the want of market information usually induces.

The _Diario_ is delivered at the houses of Manilla subscribers at about
daylight every morning, so that they may make themselves masters of
its contents while sipping their chocolate, before engaging in the
business of the day. This is no slight luxury, I assure the reader,
and it is not at all diminished by the place being so remote from
the sound of Bow-bells and the region of Cockaigne, although it is
true that the contents of the paper are not composed of exciting
parliamentary reports, or of leading articles equal in talent to
those of the _Times_ or _Morning Chronicle_.

The mail bags are carried to the provinces by mounted couriers, and
the north post, arriving at Manilla every Friday morning, brings
communications from the important provinces of Bulacan, Bataan,
Zambales, Pampanga, Nueva Eciga, Pangasinan, Ilocos (North and South),
Abra, and Cagayan; and is despatched from the capital to all these
districts every Monday at noon.

The south post, embracing the provinces of Laguna, Batangas, Mindoro,
the islands of Masbate and Ticao, Camarines (North and South), Albay,
Samars, and Leyte, reaches Manilla every Tuesday morning, and is
despatched from it