[17] La Perouse said that Manila was perhaps the most fortunately situated city in the world.

[18] Sapan or Sibucao, Caesalpinia Sapan.  Pernambuco or Brazil wood, to which the empire of Brazil owes its name, comes from the Caesalpinia echinat and the Caesalpinia Braziliensis. (The oldest maps of America remark of Brazil:  “Its only useful product is Brazil (wood).”) The sapan of the Philippines is richer in dye stuff than all other eastern asiatic woods, but it ranks below the Brazilian sapan.  It has, nowadays, lost its reputation, owing to its being often stupidly cut down too early.  It is sent especially to China, where it is used for dyeing or printing in red.  The stuff is first macerated with alum, and then for a finish dipped in a weak alcoholic solution of alkali.  The reddish brown tint so frequently met with in the clothes of the poorer Chinese is produced from sapan.

[19] Large quantities of small mussel shells (Cypraea moneta) were sent at this period to Siam, where they are still used as money.

[20] Berghaus’ Geo. hydrogr.  Memoir.

[21] Manila was first founded in 1571, but as early as 1565, Urdaneta, Legaspi’s pilot, had found the way back through the Pacific Ocean while he was seeking in the higher northern latitudes for a favorable north-west wind.  Strictly speaking, however, Urdaneta was not the first to make use of the return passage, for one of Legaspi’s five vessels, under the command of Don Alonso de Arellano, which had on board as pilot Lope Martin, a mulatto, separated itself from the fleet after they had reached the Islands, and returned to New Spain on a northern course, in order to claim the promised reward for the discovery.  Don Alonso was disappointed, however, by the speedy return of Urdaneta.

[22] Kottenkamp I., 1594.

[23] At first the maximum value of the imports only was limited, and the Manila merchants were not over scrupulous in making false statements as to their worth; to put an end to these malpractices a limit was placed to the amount of silver exported.  According to Mas, however, the silver illegally exported amounted to six or eight times the prescribed limit.

[24] La Perouse mentions a French firm (Sebis), that, in 1787, had been for many years established in Manila.

[25] R. Cocks to Thomas Wilson (Calendar of State Papers, India, No. 823) ....  “The English will obtain a trade in China, so they bring not in any padres (as they term them), which the Chinese cannot abide to hear of, because heretofore they came in such swarms, and are always begging without shame.”

[26] As late as 1857 some old decrees, passed against the establishment of foreigners, were renewed.  A royal ordinance of 1844 prohibits the admission of strangers into the interior of the colony under any pretext whatsoever.

[27] Vide Pinkerton.

[28] Each packet was 5 x 2 1/2 x 1 1/2 = 18.75 Spanish cubic feet.  St. Croix.