eing very seldom met with there.

When the result of an adventure is good, the traders look upon these
presents and bad debts as necessary expenses incurred to conciliate
the authorities of the place, without whose good-will they would be
quite unable to prosecute the trade, and in this sort of commerce the
Chinese are adepts, although no Europeans could manage it, or would
carry it on while upon such a footing.

The ships most suited for the trade are small vessels, of about 200
tons, and their cargoes consist of an infinite variety of goods, each
lot being generally of small value. The invoices of a cargo usually
cover many pages of paper, and it is no easy matter to make them up
without the assistance of intelligent Chinese, who have themselves
been engaged in the traffic, and are well acquainted with the place
and the people to be dealt with.

Some of the principal cotton manufactures sent to that market from
Manilla consist of chintz prints, jaconets and mulls, white shirtings,
cambrics, bandana, kambaya, and other descriptions of handkerchiefs;
also, iron and hardware, glassware, coarse China earthenware, silk,
cloths, copper work, &c.

Ships are in the habit of touching at some port of the Philippines,
generally the Island of Panay, there to load and fill up with
rice, sugar, tobacco, oil, and several other articles in small
quantities. Rice is generally taken from its being always in demand
by the Sooloomen, whose habits and feelings little suit them for its
production, even when the nature of the country admits of its being
grown. The Chinese usually take down a large quantity of a kind of
cloth made in their own country, which habit has substituted for money,
a piece of it of the usual size being always reckoned as a dollar.

The Sooloomen pay for their purchases in various articles, of which the
edible birds'-nests are the most valuable. They are classified by the
traders as of two sorts: white, and feathered; of which, the first sort
is the most valuable, being generally worth about its weight in silver,
or if very good, a little more; but should its colour tend to a red
or darkish tinge, it is depreciated in value and is not worth so much.

The feathered sort, called so because the edible substance, of which
the Chinamen make soup, is covered by the birds' down and feathers,
is very much lower in price than the white kind, being worth nearly
two dollars a pound, or I believe it is generally roughly ta