ks, which include all branches
of learning. In several of the apartments also are very respectable
libraries.... In the printing-office are several presses, and various
styles of type of different sizes; and there works are produced as
accurate, well engraved, and neat as in Espana--and sometimes with
errors that are less stupid and more endurable. The gallery (in which
there is a truck [_trucos_, a game resembling billiards] table for
the holidays) is a beautiful apartment, long, wide, and spacious;
and so elevated that it overlooks on one side the city, and on the
other the great bay of Manila. From it may be seen all the galleons,
pataches, galliots, champans, and every other kind of vessels, which
leave or enter the port, from America, China, Coromandel, Batavia, and
other Oriental kingdoms, and from the provinces of these islands. It is
adorned (as also are the corridors) with paintings, maps, landscapes,
and other things curious and pleasant to the sight.... There is a
school, for teaching reading, writing, and arithmetic to the boys
from without.... In the orchard is a house, with its offices, for
the Indian house-servants, and a church; they have their chapel,
very fully equipped, in which they practice various devotions and
receive the sacraments.... In charge of this, a sort of seminary, is
a student brother; and in it the Indians learn the doctrine, virtue,
good habits, the holy fear of God, civilized ways, polite manners,
letters, and other accomplishments, according to their ability. The
principal patio of the college is a right-angled quadrilateral; in
it there is a garden bordered with rose-trees, which bear roses all
the year round, with other flowers, and medicinal herbs. There are
other gardens and orchards, and seven deep wells of running water
(and some of it is very good) for drinking purposes. In the library
is a round table made in one piece, almost forty common palmos in
circumference--an adornment worthy of the king's own library."

[83] Cf. the enthusiastic description by Murillo Velarde
(_Hist. Philipinas_, fol. 195 v.-198) of this "magnificent temple." He
says that its dimensions were 204 x 90 feet; and that it was surmounted
by two towers, inclosing the facade--for which he apologizes, as
loaded with inappropriate ornamentation; but it is, nevertheless,
"a shell worthy of the pearl which it encloses." It was planned by
Father Juan Antonio Campion (who died in 1651), and was built of stone
o