a, proprietors of the mines of
Morong and Angat, and the factor of the Philippine Company, Don Juan
Francisco Urroroz. Notwithstanding its advantages, this interesting
branch of industry has not yet passed beyond the most rude principles
and imperfect practice, owing to the want of correct information
as to the best process, and scarcity of funds on the part of the
proprietors to carry on their works. Without the aid of rolling or
slitting mills, indeed unprovided with the most essential instruments,
they have hitherto confined themselves to converting their iron into
plow shares, bolos, hoes, and such other agricultural implements;
leaving the Chinese of Amoy in quiet possession of the advantages
of being allowed to market annual supplies of all kinds of nails,
the boilers used on the sugar plantations, pots and pans, as well as
other articles in this line, which might easily be manufactured in
the Islands.

[Sulphur.] In the Island of Leyte, abundance of sulphur is met with,
and from thence the gunpowder works of Manila are supplied at very
reasonable prices. Jaspers, cornelians and agates, are also found in
profusion in many of these provinces; everything, indeed, promises
varied mineral wealth worthy of exciting the curiosity and useful
researches of mineralogists, who, unfortunately, have not hitherto
extended their labors to these remote parts of the globe.

[Pearls.] Pearl fisheries are, from time to time, undertaken off the
coast of the Island of Mindanao, and also near smaller islands not
far from Cebu, but with little success and less constancy, not because
there is a scarcity of fine pearls of a bright color and considerable
size, but on account of the divers' want of skill and their just dread
of the sharks, which, in great numbers infest these seas. Amber is
frequently gathered in considerable lumps in the vicinity of Samar and
the other Visayan Islands as well as mother-of-pearl, tortoise-shell,
and red and black coral, of the latter kind of which, I have seen
shafts as thick as my finger and six or eight feet long.

[Estates.] The proprietors of estates in the Philippines are of
four classes. The most considerable is that of the religious orders,
Augustinians and Dominicans, who cultivate their respective lands on
joint account, or let them out at a moderate ground-rent, which the
planters pay in kind; but far from living in opulence, and accumulating
the immense revenues some of the religious communit