Now that the Stars and Stripes float over the Philippines it is to be hoped that a regular sanatorium will be erected at this beautiful and health-restoring spot, the advantages of which might attract sufferers from all the Far East. On these journeys I had a good opportunity of studying the people. The chief exports are Abacá (Manila hemp), and rice. In Camarines Sur the principal crop is rice, whilst in Albay the hemp predominates, and they import rice. The cultivation of rice, which I have briefly described when writing of the Tagals, is not an occupation calculated to improve the minds or bodies of those engaged in it, and I have noticed that wherever this is the staple crop the peasantry are in a distinctly lower condition than where cane is planted and sugar manufactured. Their lives are passed in alternate periods of exhausting labour and of utter idleness, there is nothing to strive for, nothing to learn, nothing to improve. The same customs go on from generation to generation, the same rude implements are used, and the husbandman paid for his labour in kind lives destitute of comfort in the present, and without hope for the future. Nor can the cultivation and preparation of hemp be considered as a much more improving occupation. Little care, indeed, is required by the Musa textilis after the first planting, and the cleaning of the fibre is a simple matter, but very laborious. Several Spaniards are settled in these provinces, also a few agents of British houses in Manila, and some Chinese and Mestizos. They usually complain bitterly of the difficulty they experience in getting hemp delivered to them owing to the laziness and unpunctuality of the natives. Yet, notwithstanding this, most of them live in affluence and some have amassed fortunes by Vicol labour. There is, in fact, a good deal of money in Albay, Daraga, and other towns in the hemp districts, and they are the happy hunting-ground of the Jew pedlar who there finds a good market for yellow diamonds and off-colour gems unsaleable in London or Paris. Houndsditch and Broadway will do well to note. The peasantry, however, either from improvidence or aversion to steady labour, seem to be rather worse off than the Tagals and Pampangos, more especially those amongst them who cultivate paddy. The whole of the large amount of hemp exported from Manila and Cebú is cleaned by hand. Several attempts have been made to employ machinery, but the inherent conditions of the industry are unfavourable to success in this line. The plants are grown principally on the eastern slopes of the volcanic mountains of Southern Luzon, and the adjacent islands where the soil is soft and friable and roads are unknown.