rder to prevent fraud.

After the tobacco has been manufactured into cigars, the contractor
has to deliver it at various stations throughout the islands, these
places being generally the head-quarters of the fiscal or _estanco_
department of the different maritime provinces from which the other are
supplied. Besides the coasting trade from the provinces to Manilla,
and that in the government service, there is a trade carried on
by various provinces between themselves, such as conveying rice or
paddy from the grain-districts to other provinces where less of it
is grown, from the attention of the natives being directed to some
other agricultural produce more suitable than paddy to their soil and
climate, as from Antique to Mindora or Zamboanga, or from the island
of Samar to that of Negros, or to Mesamis. Thus in the hemp provinces,
little paddy is planted, as it is more profitable for them to make
hemp, or to weave Sinamais cloths, &c., than to do so. This commerce,
however, is not of any great extent; the principal--indeed the only
great--market of the country being Manilla, where traders from all
parts of the Archipelago meet to buy and sell.

It has been mentioned elsewhere that foreign men, as well as foreign
ships, are at present excluded from engaging in the provincial trade;
which is about as illiberal and unwise an act as any country could
be guilty of, and should be changed, not for the benefit of foreign
traders, but for the good of the country.

In connexion with the province trade, the naval school ought to be
mentioned, as it is a most useful institution, where arithmetic,
geometry, and navigation are taught gratuitously, at an expense to
Government of nearly 2,400 dollars a-year.

The President of the Chamber of Commerce is also President of the
school, and the members of that body have the privilege of admitting
the pupils--a right which I believe they exercise liberally. At this
place, boys are very well trained up in the scientific and theoretical
part of their profession; but unfortunately, from some cause or other,
their education afterwards as practical seamen does not keep pace with
it, and they generally are as much behind our British or American
shipmasters in all relating to the sea, as can be well conceived,
although they are not unfrequently superior to them, and at least
are equal, in their theoretical attainments.

At this school, many of the Creoles and Mestizos of Manilla have
shown to