Cocoanuts are grown in southern Luzon and are used in various ways.  The products are largely used in the islands, but the exports, in 1894, were valued at $2,400,000.

Cattle, goats and sheep have been introduced from Spain, but they are not numerous.  Domestic pigs and chickens are seen around every hut in the farming districts.

The principal beast of burden is the carabac or water buffalo, which is used for ploughing rice fields, as well as drawing heavy loads on sledges or on carts.

Large horses are almost unknown, but there are great numbers of native ponies, from nine to twelve hands high, but possessing strength and endurance far beyond their size.

Commerce and Transportation.

The internal commerce between Manila and the different islands is quite large, but I was unable to find any official records giving exact figures concerning it.  It is carried on almost entirely by water, in steamers of 500 to 1,000 tons.  There are regular mail steamers, once in two weeks, on four routes, viz.; Northern Luzon, Southern Luzon, Visayas and Mindanao; also a steamer every two months to the Carolines and Ladrones, and daily steamers on Manila Bay.  These lines are all subsidized.  To facilitate this navigation extensive harbor works have been in progress at Manila for several years, and a plan for lighting the coasts has been made, calling for forty-three principal lights, of which seventeen have already been constructed in the most substantial manner, besides sixteen lights of secondary importance.

There is only one line of railway, built by English capital, running from Manila north to Dagupan, a distance of about 120 miles.  The roads in the immediate vicinity of Manila are macadamized and in fairly good order; elsewhere they are narrow paths of soft, black soil, which becomes almost impassable in the rainy season.  Transportation is then effected by sledges, drawn through the mud by carabacs.  There are telegraph lines connecting most of the provinces of Luzon with Manila, and cables to the Visayas and southern islands, and thence to Borneo and Singapore, as well as a direct cable from Manila to Hongkong.  The land telegraph lines are owned by the Government, and the cables all belong to an English company, which receives a large subsidy.  In Manila there is a narrow gauge street railway, operated by horse-power, about eleven miles in total length; also a telephone system, and electric lights.

Communications with Europe are maintained by the Spanish Trans-Atlantic Company (subsidized), which sends a steamer every four weeks from Manila and Barcelona, making the trip in about twenty-seven days.  The same company also sends an intermediate steamer from Manila to Singapore, meeting the French Messagoric each way.  There is also a non-subsidized line running from Manila to Hongkong every two weeks, and connecting there with the English, French and German mails for Europe, and with the Pacific mail and Canadian Pacific steamers for Japan and America.