_Manilla_ is the chief city, or rather the only one, in the island, seated at the foot of a ridge of high hills, fronting the harbour, near the S.W. point of the island, in lat. 14° 38' N: This city is defended by a strong wall, and is composed of well-built spacious houses, covered with pan-tiles, the streets being broad and regular, with a large market-place in the middle, and has many fair churches and convents. The harbour is large; and, besides the two great Acapulco ships, contains abundance of small vessels belonging to the place, besides usually thirty or forty stout Chinese junks; and the Portuguese also have liberty to trade to this place. Many Chinese merchants also reside constantly in this city. A league from the city, nearer the sea, there is a strong fortress to defend the harbour, where the great ships lie at anchor. Most of this account I received from Mr Coppinger, our surgeon, who had formerly been thither, sailing from the Coromandel coast. The time of the year being now too far spent for our purpose, we resolved to sail for Pulo Condore, a knot of small islands on the coast of Cambodia, and to return in May to lie in wait for the Acapulco ship. We accordingly made sail from the island of Luçonia on the 26th of February; and coming into the lat. of 14° N. we steered our course W. for Pulo Condore,[197] and in our way got sight of the south end of the _Pracel_ shoals, being three small isles, or large spots of sand, just above water, only a mile from us. We came in sight of Pulo Condore on the 13th March, and anchored next day on the north side of that island, in ten fathoms, on clean hard sand, two miles from the shore. [Footnote 197: This course ought rather to have been called W.S.W. as Pulo Condore is lat. 8° 40' N.] Pulo Condore is the chief of a group of isles, and the only one of them that is inhabited, in lat. 8° 44' N. long. 106° 5' E. forty leagues S. by E. from the mouth of the river of Cambodia, otherwise called the _Japanese_ river. Two of these isles are tolerably high and large, and the rest very small. The principal isle, off which we anchored, is five leagues long from E. to W. and three leagues broad, but in some places not a mile. The other large isle is three miles long from N. to S. and between these, at the west end of the largest, there is a convenient harbour, the entrance being on the north, where the two isles are a mile asunder. On the largest isle there grows a tall tree, three or four feet diameter, which the inhabitants cut horizontally half through, a foot from the ground, after which they cut out the upper part in a slope, till it meets the transverse cut, whence a liquor distils into a hollow made in the semicircular shelf, or stump, which, after being boiled, becomes good tar, and if boiled still more, becomes perfect pitch, both of these answering well for marine use. Such a tree produces two quarts of this juice daily for a month, after which it dries up, but recovers again.