Of the original cutters two were for a long time under charter by the military authorities for use as despatch boats and transports; two are employed as lighthouse tenders, and two have been assigned to the Bureau of Coast Surveys for coast and geodetic work; one collects lepers and takes them to the Leper Colony at Culion. The cable-ship Rizal, operated by the Bureau of Navigation, has succeeded in repairing and keeping in repair the marine cables throughout the islands. Such cables are especially subject to injury in Philippine waters on account of the strength of the currents between the islands, the frequency with which stretches of sea bottom are overgrown with sharp coral, and the common occurrence of earthquakes. When not otherwise engaged the Rizal carries commercial cargoes if opportunity offers. She has proved useful for bringing in rice when a shortage of this commodity, which is the bread of the Filipino people, threatened, and for handling cargoes of lumber of sizes such that regular inter-island steamers could not load it. In addition to the vessels above mentioned, the Bureau of Navigation owns and operates a fleet of launches, some of which are seagoing, and a number of dredges which are employed in improving the harbours and rivers of the islands as funds permit. The bureau also owns and operates its own machine shop and marine railway, and repairs its own vessels. A section of the machine shop is set aside for lighthouse work, and in it lighthouse apparatus of every description is fabricated and repaired. While lighthouses and buoys are not means of communication they are aids to it. The thousand and ninety-five inhabited islands and approximately two hundred and fifty ports of varying importance, depending as they do entirely upon water transportation for communication with each other and with the outside world, had no wharfage whatever available for large vessels, and no publicly owned wharfage within ten yards of which even the larger inter-island steamers could be berthed. Manila had no protected anchorage, and during the season of southwest monsoons and typhoons vessels were sometimes compelled to lie in the harbour for weeks before they could unload, a fact which gave the port a deservedly bad name.