Cavite is provided with a fort, which is not in a state to resist the attack of an European enemy. It is constructed on a tongue of low land, which the sea threatens with submersion; its harbour is not sheltered from the north and N. N. W. winds; and it is infested with a species of worm which attacks vessels, and soon renders them unfit to keep the sea. Another great inconvenience is, that water is procured at a great distance; and for this purpose it is necessary to employ the flat-bottomed boats of the country, which are alone capable of penetrating sufficiently far up the river. Three parts of the town, little considerable in itself, are occupied, like all the Spanish possessions, by convents; the suburbs are called Fauxbourg Saint Roch. It consists of a collection of houses, built of bamboo, and covered with palm leaves; but there are in it, however, the ruins of a church which appears to have been sufficiently handsome. The Indians, who joined the English in 1762, destroyed it, and that which was formerly held in such respect is now become a shelter for cattle. The Spaniards have many religious establishments in the island of Luçon. It might be averred, that it never was their intention to plant colonies, for they have only sent monks, and appear to have had no other end in view than the propagation of the Catholic faith. The people, therefore, who have submitted to the Spanish yoke, scarcely exhibit any traits of a polished nation. Languishing in inactivity, they are without energy, and appear equally indifferent to virtue as to vice. Indolence, a dereliction of life and timidity, constitute their character, and misery is their habitual state; but there are districts to which the Spaniards have been unable to penetrate. In vain have they tried to subdue those who have retired thither; in vain applied force, severity, and punishment, to subjugate and convert them. These people have escaped from the yoke by removing themselves to defiles where the Spaniards cannot attack them: they have carried with them into the retreat they have chosen the recollection of the injuries they have suffered, and of those with which they have been threatened; they nourish, in the extremity of their asylum, an implacable hatred against the strangers, whom they consider as the oppressors of their native land; they incessantly meditate on, and prepare the means of revenge. Supported by their courage, animated by their hatred, they dare approach even the gates of the capital: their progress is marked with pillage, murder, devastation, and rape; they even live at the expense of such of their countrymen as have submitted; they carry off, they tear from them the support of a miserable existence, which these latter have neither the strength nor the courage to defend.