it yields wine, vinegar, and oil in sufficient quantities not only to supply that region abundantly, but likewise to ship and send away to other neighboring regions--especially furnishing wine to Japon, Maluco, and Nueva Espana. The rigging of vessels is also manufactured from this tree. In fact, there is such an abundance of the materials necessary for the construction of ships that a vessel which is built in Nueva Espana or Peru in several years' time for fifty or sixty thousand pesos, is constructed in the Filipinas in less than one year, and at a cost of less than eight thousand pesos. The cane is in itself another miracle, especially the kind called _cauayan_, the size and thickness of which are incredible. I shall not say what I have seen of that species during fourteen years; but one of our Society lately told me in Lisboa, while discussing this subject, that in the river of London he had seen a vessel which had one of these canes for a pump. In addition to Pliny, [45] the most ancient writer who makes much mention of these canes, there are many moderns who testify to their size--especially one who, from information received by those of his nation who have coursed these seas (to our detriment and their own danger), has written an account of these canes and of other plants and fruits of that New World. Although this cane is so large, it is so easily worked that it is employed in whatever is needed for any of the uses of life; from vessels and houses (which can be made from it in all their parts), its use extends to the pot and wood for cooking. It seems to me that its uses could go no farther; and in these it corresponds, too, with what Pliny [46] writes of the reed and the papyrus--particularly as within the hollow of the cane, there are membranes somewhat similar to beaten and glazed paper, on which I have at times written. In some of the canes there is also found a juice or liquor which is drunk as a luxury. There is nothing especially remarkable in the fact that so much abundance should be deposited in the hollow of these canes; for, just as in other regions trees need water, in the Filipinas some are found which furnish it--acting as a perpetual fountain for a whole community, even though it may be on the apparently dry uplands. In all that locality there are no other springs than these trees. The method which they employ for obtaining the liquid from the tree is to make some cuts or incisions in the trunk and the thicker branches; and out of these is distilled and flows a clear, sweet water, in ample quantities. But, to return to the subject of the canes, it should be known that in our church of Manila were erected two ladders, each of which had only two canes somewhat more than eight brazas in length: the steps consisted of strips and slips cut from the said cane. They were used in decorating the church and each one would sustain at its top two or three men; they were erected without any prop being needed to sustain them.