selves by a monopoly.

There are several extensive manufactories of cigars carried on by
the Government at and near Manilla, the most extensive being in the
capital, although those at Malabone and Cavite also employ a great
number of people in rolling them up.

In making cheroots women only are employed, the number of those so
engaged in the factory at Manilla being generally about 4000. Besides
these, a large body of men are employed at another place in the
composition of cigarillos, or small cigars, kept together by
an envelope of white paper in place of tobacco; these being the
description most smoked by the Indians.

The flavour of Manilla cheroots is peculiar to themselves, being quite
different from that made of any other sort of tobacco; the greatest
characteristic probably being its slightly soporific tendency, which
has caused many persons, in the habit of using it, to imagine that
opium is employed in the preparatory treatment of the tobacco, which,
however, is not the case.

The cigars are made up by the hands of women in large rooms of the
factory, each of them containing from 800 to 1000 souls. These are all
seated, or squatted, Indian-like, on their haunches, upon the floor,
round tables, at each of which there is an old woman presiding to keep
the young ones in order, about a dozen of them being the complement of
a table. All of them are supplied with a certain weight of tobacco,
of the first, second, or third qualities used in composing a cigar,
and are obliged to account for a proportionate number of cheroots,
the weight and size of which are by these means kept equal.

As they use stones for beating out the leaf on the wooden tables,
before which they are seated, the noise produced by them while making
them up is deafening, and generally sufficient to make no one desirous
of protracting a visit to the place. The workers are well recompensed
by the Government, as very many of them earn from six to ten dollars
a month for their labour, and as that amount is amply sufficient to
provide them with all their comforts, and to leave a large balance for
their expenses in dress, &c., they are seldom very constant labourers,
and never enter the factory on Sundays, or, at least, on as great an
annual number of feast-days as there are Sundays in a year.

During the years of 1848 and 49, the Government were not in the habit
of selling leaf-tobacco for export, but they have again resumed the
practice of 1847,