Smoking, sleeping, and eating, are the labours of their days, and in all of these they are adepts. Their prevalent taste, however, as regards cookery, is not suitable to a British palate, as the favourite accompaniment of garlic is commonly used in such a quantity by their cooks, that they are very apt to spoil a dinner for a foreigner's eating, unless they are checked or cautioned with regard to the use of it. Their usual drink is wine of different kinds, which they take out of a glass or tumbler, as we would beer or water: the quantity consumed is moderate enough, about a pint being a usual allowance--and that is frequently mixed with about an equal quantity of water. Sherry, claret, priorato, pajarete, manzanilla, malaga, and muscatel, are the sorts most in request, all of them being of ordinary quality, to the taste of any one accustomed to drink good wine at home, from which the wines procurable here are as different as possible, and especially the sherry. But in that resides a mystery known best to the wine-merchants, who doctor up the wine consumed in Great Britain to suit the taste of those who buy it from them. Strange to say, even to this, a Spanish colony, there is not sent out a single pipe of wine, such as any one accustomed to drink the British _composition_ would call good sherry. Claret, or _vino tinto_, is very generally used in preference to tea or coffee at breakfast, but at that early time of the day it is mixed with a large proportion of water. This meal, however, is not a general one in the Philippines, as the custom of taking chocolate in the morning destroys all appetite for it, and the early dinner hour of the Spaniards in general, does not render it essential. The want of interesting occupation, and the heat of the sun, preventing out-of-door exercise during the day, has doubtless originated these indolent customs, which have given rise to many bad habits, and the low scale of morality prevailing among them. A large proportion of them being bachelors, are in the habit of selecting a mistress as a companion with whom they may forget the dullness, and shake off the apathy of their aimless existence; a very large proportion, in fact, nearly all of them, being in the habit of choosing such a household companion from among the Creole, Mestiza, or native girls, but generally from the last two races. The native girls have the reputation of proving more faithful to their lovers than the other two, as they look upon such a connection in the light of a marriage, and consider themselves guilty of no immorality during its continuance. When a native beauty forms such a connection with a white man, her relations do not sunder all the former ties existing between her and them, by casting her off, but on the contrary are, as frequently as not, highly pleased at it, viewing the affair in the light of a fortunate marriage for her.