The coasting trade, which is a very important nursery for the marine of the Philippines, is carried on exclusively by the national vessels, no foreign ships being allowed to engage in it. Manilla, being the only port open to the foreign merchants, is the grand emporium or centre to which nearly all the productions of the islands are brought, which regulation gives employment to an infinite number of colonial shipping, in carrying them to that market. Every day there are several arrivals from the various sea-ports of the different districts of the islands, of brigs, schooners, pontines, galeras, caracoas, and pancos, all of them being curious specimens of every variety of ship-building, from the black and low snake-like schooner, or handsome brig, to the most rude description of vessel built. Where iron nails are scarce and expensive, some of these are fastened together apparently in a manner the most unsatisfactory possible for their crews or passengers, should they have to encounter a gale of wind during their voyages. Nearly the whole of the coasting trade is in the hands of the Indians, or Mestizos of Chinese descent, called _Sangleys_, although several Spaniards and European Mestizos at Manilla also own a better class of ships than those described, constantly engaged in going and returning from the provinces. Still, from some cause or other, they do not appear to carry the on trade so successfully as the provincial shipowners, most of whom have only one or two small vessels, which they keep constantly running between their native place and Manilla, and whose sole business it is, after despatching either of them, to purchase up from the cultivators of the soil, such small lots of their produce as are cheap at the time, such as sugar, rice, &c., which they are able to do at greatly lower terms, when buying them by little at a time, than it would be possible for the agent of a merchant in Manilla to do, whose operations it would probably be necessary should be conducted upon a more extensive and quicker scale, and whose knowledge of the district and of the vendors could seldom be equal to that of a native Sangley, or Indian born among them. In consequence of all the produce being originally purchased by small lots at a time, it is of very variable quality; and on a cargo of Muscovado sugar, for instance, being purchased from one of these traders by a foreign merchant of Manilla, for exportation, it is perfectly essential to open the whole of the bags in which it has come up to Manilla from the provinces, and to empty their contents into one great heap, which causes it to get well mingled together, and ensures the requisite regularity of sample, after which it has to be rebagged and shipped off to the foreign vessels that may be waiting to receive it in the bay.