escribes
the mode of manufacture by those employed by the government:--

In making cheroots women only are employed, the number of those so
engaged in the factory at Manila being generally about 4,000. Beside
these, a large body of men are employed at another place in the
composition of cigarillos, or small cigars, kept together by an
envelope of white paper in place of tobacco; these being the
description most smoked by the Indians. The flavor of Manila
cheroots is peculiar to themselves, being quite different from that
made of any other sort of tobacco; the greatest characteristic
probably being its slightly soporific tendency, which has caused
many persons in the habit of using it to imagine that opium is
employed in the preparatory treatment of the tobacco, which,
however, is not the case.

The cigars are made up by the hands of women in large rooms of the
factory, each of them containing from 800 to 1,000 souls. These are
all seated, or squatted, Indian like, on their haunches, upon the
floor, round tables, at each of which there is an old woman
presiding to keep the young ones in order, about a dozen of them
being the complement of a table. All of them are supplied with a
certain weight of tobacco, of the first, second, or third qualities
used in composing a cigar, and are obliged to account for a
proportionate number of cheroots, the weight and size of which are
by these means kept equal. As they use stones for beating out the
leaf on the wooden tables before which they are seated, the noise
produced by them while making them up is deafening, and generally
sufficient to make no one desirous of protracting a visit to the
place. The workers are well recompensed by the government, as very
many of them earn from six to ten dollars a month for their labor;
and as that amount is amply sufficient to provide them with all
their comforts, and to leave a large balance for their expenses in
dress, &c., they are seldom very constant laborers, and never enter
the factory on Sundays, or, at least, on as great an annual number
of feast days as there are Sundays in a year.

The Japanese grow a good deal of tobacco for their own consumption,
which is very considerable. They consider that from Sasma as the best,
then that from Nangasakay, Sinday, &c. The worst comes from the
province of Tzyngaru; it is