After the tobacco has been manufactured into cigars, the contractor has to deliver it at various stations throughout the islands, these places being generally the head-quarters of the fiscal or _estanco_ department of the different maritime provinces from which the other are supplied. Besides the coasting trade from the provinces to Manilla, and that in the government service, there is a trade carried on by various provinces between themselves, such as conveying rice or paddy from the grain-districts to other provinces where less of it is grown, from the attention of the natives being directed to some other agricultural produce more suitable than paddy to their soil and climate, as from Antique to Mindora or Zamboanga, or from the island of Samar to that of Negros, or to Mesamis. Thus in the hemp provinces, little paddy is planted, as it is more profitable for them to make hemp, or to weave Sinamais cloths, &c., than to do so. This commerce, however, is not of any great extent; the principal--indeed the only great--market of the country being Manilla, where traders from all parts of the Archipelago meet to buy and sell. It has been mentioned elsewhere that foreign men, as well as foreign ships, are at present excluded from engaging in the provincial trade; which is about as illiberal and unwise an act as any country could be guilty of, and should be changed, not for the benefit of foreign traders, but for the good of the country. In connexion with the province trade, the naval school ought to be mentioned, as it is a most useful institution, where arithmetic, geometry, and navigation are taught gratuitously, at an expense to Government of nearly 2,400 dollars a-year. The President of the Chamber of Commerce is also President of the school, and the members of that body have the privilege of admitting the pupils--a right which I believe they exercise liberally. At this place, boys are very well trained up in the scientific and theoretical part of their profession; but unfortunately, from some cause or other, their education afterwards as practical seamen does not keep pace with it, and they generally are as much behind our British or American shipmasters in all relating to the sea, as can be well conceived, although they are not unfrequently superior to them, and at least are equal, in their theoretical attainments. At this school, many of the Creoles and Mestizos of Manilla have shown to the world that they did not want the ability to learn, when they had good masters to instruct them; but good heads and hands are seldom found together. In fact, I rather think that the lads educated here are taught too much (if that be possible), and by being so, have their ideas raised above their stations; for many of them are, by a great deal, much more like gentlemen than a number of the merchant skippers or mates in our British ships, whose horny fists and tar-stained dress make few pretensions to outward gentility.