sort of little action, all confined to a slight movement of the hands and flipping of the fingers....  The Archbishop is, I am told, very bigoted.  He did not come to dinner yesterday (a grand full-dress dinner given in my honour), and some say it was because of my being a heretic.  I take it I was in error yesterday in speaking of the Spanish system of compelling conformity of belief as necessarily beginning in harshness.  I fancy the monks have won over the simple Indians here to a great extent by gentle methods.  They protect them, and manage their affairs, and know all their secrets through the confessional, and amuse them with no end of feast-days, and gewgaws, and puerile ceremonies.  The natives seem to have a great deal of our dear old French Canadian habitans about them, only in a more sublime stage of infantine simplicity.

[Sidenote:  A pueblo.]

January 28th.—­I drove this morning to a village (pueblo) about seven miles off, starting at 5.30.  The weather nice and cool.  The country very rich.  The cottages of bamboo and leaves, and all raised on bamboo posts of about ten feet in height, seemed very comfortable.  I never saw a more cheerful-looking rural population.  All nicely and modestly dressed.  The women completely emancipated from all eastern seclusion.  I visited in this pueblo another great cigar manufactory; 8,000 girls employed.  I must say that this colony appears to be a great success, as far as the natives are concerned, and I almost regret that I am not going to see something more of the interior.  Crealock has been through the barracks, which he says are in admirable condition.  The native soldiers appear to be very well treated.  We dined yesterday with the Admiral.  Just before we set out for this dinner, a procession was announced, and I went to the balcony to see it.  The students of a college, some 350 in number, were escorting about two spangled and sparkling images of the Virgin, and a variety of flags.  Each carried a lighted torch, and they lined both sides of the road, the interval between their rows being occupied by the images, three or four bands of music, the flags, &c.  As all the bands played at once, and as loud as they possibly could, the noise was tremendous, and the cathedral bell helped, by tolling its deepest tone as the procession passed.  These processions are the great religious stimulant here, and they form another point of resemblance with the French part of Canada.

After little more than three days’ stay among the Spaniards of Luzon, he embarked again on the 29th on board the ‘Ferooz,’ and passing by Sarawak and the north-west coast of Borneo, crossed the Line to visit the Dutch settlement of Java.

[Sidenote:  Crossing the Line.]