The press of Manilla is much more active than is commonly supposed, as, besides the _Diario_, there are several other periodicals printed in the place. Among them may be mentioned the _Guia de Forasteros_, and an _Almanac_, which is printed at the College of Santo Tomas, being entirely got up and sold by the priests of that institution, the proceeds being devoted to charitable purposes. Various religious and polemical works also emanate at different times from the press, all of them neatly and well printed, nay, highly creditable to the Indian compositors who execute them. I have frequently seen it stated in books, the authors of which should have been better informed, that no periodical publications exist at Manilla. Certainly there is much less appetite there for such things, than is exhibited among my own countrymen, whose birthright it is to grumble at the conduct of authorities, and to show up delinquencies with the most unsparing zeal, neither of which would be quite safe to attempt at Manilla, although it is so in Great Britain, and all her colonies and dependencies. CHAPTER XXVI. Through ignorance and a misconception of the nature of the country, many people are in the habit of adducing the scantiness of manufactures among the Indians, as an evidence of their backwardness in civilization and the arts which it teaches. But this is not so in reality, for if our readers reflect on the subject a short time, it can scarcely fail to occur to them, that the fertility of the soil, and the abundance of primary materials, even of those made use of in the manufactories, is the true reason why they neglect manufactures, and turn all their attention to growing the raw produce, from which spring the materials for conducting them. It is this cause which makes the Americans send their cotton-wool to Manchester, to be there, at some thousands of miles from the place of its growth, made into cloth--and the shepherds of Australia to send their wool to Yorkshire for a like purpose. This appears paradoxical, but it is true. A day's labour on a fertile tropical soil is better recompensed when it is directed to grow cotton, than it would be, were the same labour applied to weaving the wool into cloth; for although this climate is suitable for the growth of cotton in the fields, it does not at all follow that it is so for weaving cloth, as has been proved to be the case in the United States. In that country, where manufacturing industry has so much energy of character in those carrying it on to back it up, and to secure a satisfactory result, it appears very strange that we should be able to beat them in the manufacture of their own produce.