The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 759 pages of information about The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes.

The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 759 pages of information about The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes.

[230] The banana trees are well known to be among the most valuable of plants to mankind.  In their unripe state they afford starch-flour; and when mature, they supply an agreeable and nutritious fruit, which, although partaken of freely, will produce neither unpleasantness nor any injurious after-effects.  One of the best of the edible species bears fruit as early as five or six months after being planted, suckers in the meantime constantly sprouting from the roots, so that continual fruit-bearing is going on, the labor of the growers merely being confined to the occasional cutting down of the old plants and to gathering in the fruit.  The broad leaves afford to other young plants the shade which is so requisite in tropical countries, and are employed in many useful ways about the house.  Many a hut, too, has to thank the banana trees surrounding it from the conflagration, which, generally speaking, lays the village in ashes.  I should here like to make an observation upon a mistake which has spread rather widely.  In Bishop Pallegoix’s excellent work, Description du Royaume Thai ou Siam, I*. 144, he says:  “L’arbre a vernis qui est une espece de bananier, et que les Siamois appellent ‘rak,’ fournit ce beau vernis qu’on admire dans les petits meubles qu’on apporte de Chine.”  When I was in Bangkok, I called the attention of the amiable white-haired, and at that time nearly nonogenarian, bishop to this curious statement.  Shaking his head, he said he could not have written it.  I showed him the very passage.  “Ma foi, j’ai dit une betise; j’en ai dit bien d’autres,” whispered he in my ear, holding up his hand as if afraid somebody might overhear him.

[231] In 1862, English took from Spain 156 tons; 1863, 18,074 tons; 1866, 66,913 tons; 1868, 95,000 tons; and the import of rags fell from 24,000 tons in 1866 to 17,000 tons in 1668.  In Algiers a large quantity of sparto (Alfa) grows but the cost of transport is too expensive to admit of sending it to France.

[232] The British Consul estimates the receipts from this monopoly for the year 1866-7 at $8,418,939, after an expenditure of $4,519,866; thus leaving a clear profit of $3,899,073.  In the colonial budget for 1867 the profit on tobacco was estimated at $2,627,976, while the total expenditure of the colony, after deduction of the expenses occasioned by the tobacco management, was set down at $7,033,576.

According to the official tables of the chief of the Administration in Manila, 1871, the total annual revenue derived from the tobacco management between the years 1865 and 1869 amounted, on an average, to $5,367,262.  By reason of proper accounts being wanting an accurate estimate of the expenditure cannot be delivered; but it would be at least $4,000,000, so that a profit of only $1,367,262 remains.

[233] Instruccion general para la Direccion, Administracion, y Intervencion de las Rentas Estancadas, 1849.

[234] Memoria sobre el Desestanco del Tabaco en las Islas Filipinas.  Don J. S. Agius, Binondo (Manila), 1871.

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The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.