eating, making a very favourite
curry of some of the Europeans, their flesh being very tender.

The natives principally eat fish, but there is besides a large quantity
of beef and pork consumed by them, which are always procurable,
except on Fridays, when some little difficulty may be experienced in
procuring flesh, as there is only enough killed on the morning of
that day to supply the wants of the invalids. The country-fed pork
is seldom or never seen at the tables of Europeans, these animals
being too frequently allowed to feed in a most disgusting manner;
and many pigs may at any time be seen in the suburbs of the town
where the Indians dwell roaming about the streets, and efficiently
performing the duties of scavengers, by removing the filth and garbage
from many of these remote streets.

But notwithstanding their knowing, and in fact daily seeing, this
gross and disgusting mode of feeding, it is the most universal and
favourite food of the Chinese at Manilla, and is also a favourite
with the Indians.

The continued use of pork so fed not unfrequently produces a skin
disease called sarnas, something resembling itch.

Fowls, turkeys, and ducks, both tame and wild, are at all times
procurable, the supplies of the latter being from the Laguna. Geese
are seldom or never exposed for sale, but are sometimes sent from
China to private persons merely for their own consumption.

It is a curious thing that geese will not produce eggs, or sit upon
them to hatch their young, at Manilla; and it is also a sufficiently
odd circumstance, that turkeys die in a short time after reaching
Singapore, where they are sometimes sent to private individuals for
domestic use, although they thrive very well both in the Philippines
and in Java. At Singapore, however, after being a few days ashore,
some of them are attacked by a peculiar sickness, apparently giddiness
of the head, which invariably ends in death in a few minutes after
the commencement of the attack. All these birds are subject to it at
that place, if allowed to go about too long before being seized upon
by the cook.

The principal food of the Indians being rice, it is found exposed for
sale, in large and small quantities, in the bazaars, where nearly all
the kinds of fruits of the season may also be found. The catalogue
of fruits grown in the islands is a long one, but among those most
commonly seen may be reckoned plantains of all kinds, of which
there are an immense va