The Spaniards had commenced harbour work at Manila in 1892, twenty-five years after preliminary study began and sixteen years after prospective plans had been submitted. Their operations were stopped by the insurrection in 1896, at which time the present west breakwater had been about half completed, but as the completed portion was at the shore end and in shallow water it afforded no protection to ships. There had been constructed twenty-four hundred feet of masonry wall partly enclosing one of the basins provided for in the Spanish plans, and fourteen hundred eighty-five feet of wall lining canals connecting the proposed new harbour with the Pasig River. These also were temporarily useless, because there had been no dredging in front of them, or backfilling in their rear. Outside of Manila practically nothing had been done to facilitate the loading and discharge of vessels, or to protect them from the elements. We now have at Manila a deep-water harbour dredged to a uniform depth of thirty feet and enclosed by two breakwaters having a total length of nearly eleven thousand five hundred feet. Two hundred and sixty-one acres of land have been reclaimed with the dredged material. Two steel piers extend from the filled land into the deep-water harbour. One of these is six hundred fifty feet long and one hundred ten feet wide, the other six hundred feet long and seventy feet wide. Both are housed in, the sheds covering them having a total area of ninety-two thousand square feet. These piers and sheds are practically fireproof, and the largest ocean-going steamers on the Pacific can lie alongside them. Additional work planned, which should be undertaken when funds permit, includes two more piers; and bulkheads to connect the inner ends of the present piers, so as to give inter-island steamers opportunity to unload. At Cebú the sea-wall has been completed to a length of two thousand sixty feet and the channel in front of it dredged in part to ten and a half and in part to twenty-three feet at low water. Some ten and a half acres of land have been reclaimed with the material removed. Streets and roadways have been built on the reclaimed area, and a wharf eight hundred twelve feet in length, designed as an extension to the wall, is now fifty per cent completed. The harbour at Cebú should ultimately be dredged so as to give thirty feet of water along the piers.