John Chinaman in Palawan is just the same as his brother in Mindanao--a remorseless usurer, and a skilful manipulator of false weights and measures, but no worse in the treatment of the unhappy aboriginal than the Christian native or half-caste. Puerto Princesa, the capital, had a population at the time of my visit in 1890 of about 1500, of which number 1200 were males and 300 females. About half the males were soldiers and sailors, one-fourth convicts, and the remainder civilians. Most of the women had been deported from Manila as undesirable characters in that decorous city. Notwithstanding their unsavoury antecedents, they found new husbands or protectors in Puerto Princesa the moment they landed. Such was the competition for these very soiled doves, that most of them had made their new arrangements before leaving the jetty alongside which the steamer they arrived in lay. There was some little cultivation round about the capital, but as usual trading with the aborigines for gum, rattans, balate, green snail-shells, and other jungle produce was the most entrancing pursuit. At a short distance from the town was a Government Sugar Plantation, which I visited. If sugar planting could flourish anywhere, it surely should have done so here, for the land cost nothing, the convicts did all the unskilled labour and the machinery was paid for by the Government. Yet the blighting influence of the official mind succeeded even here in causing the place to be run at a loss. The sugar badly prepared was shipped to Manila to be sold at a reduced price, and sugar for the troops and general use was imported from other parts. The governor of the island, during the later period of Spanish rule, has usually been a naval officer, and as the communications are principally by sea, and any punitive operations have to be performed by the gun-boat flotilla, this would seem to be a precedent the United States might follow with advantage. Tagbanúa Alphabet. Communicated to F. H. Sawyer by Fray Lorenzo Zapater, Missionary at Inagáhuan, Palawan. [Illustration: Tagbanúa Alphabet.] N.B.--The Roman letters are to be pronounced as in Spanish and the Tagbanúa correspondingly, Ah, bay, say, day, aye or ee, o or oo, pay, ku, etc. Notes by the Padre Zapater. (Translation.) 1. The consonants in the Tagbanúa alphabet are eleven and sometimes twelve, but the vowels are three, since the ia and the oa which are vowels, are compound letters, although strictly they may be considered as vowels, but the ia and the ua are written the same, as has been said. 2. In reading the Tagbanúa alphabet, you begin from the bottom upwards. 3. To write the consonants with their vowels, for example, ba, be, bi, bo, bu, you put a dash at the right or left. If on the right, it means be, bi, and if on the left of the consonant bo, bu. N.B.--Father Zapater's note 3 is somewhat obscure, or rather badly expressed. It perhaps ought to have been said that a dash right and left means ba.