The native houses are built of bamboo with braided grass walls and thatched roofs, and are raised on stilts because of the rainy season. We went to order some embroidery one day of a Tagalog woman. Climbing a ladder into a small house, we saw the whole family sitting on the floor, working over a long frame. In some of these shacks they have a small room for visitors, with chairs and a table, and cheap prints of the Virgin on the walls. Under the house are kept usually a pig and a pony. One woman was very successful--she not only had waist patterns to show and to sell, but had a standing order from Marshall Field, in Chicago. We also visited a still more prosperous embroidery house, built of stucco, with a courtyard. These people were Spanish _mestizos_. A visit to the cigarette factory to which we were taken by Mr. Legarda showed us one of the characteristic industries of the city and gave us an idea of the deftness and quickness of those who are employed in this work. The little women who pack the cigarettes can pick up a number of them and tell in a twinkle by the feeling just how many they hold, and the cigar wrappers work with greatest rapidity and sureness and make a perfect product. It was all very clean and fresh, with hundreds of employees in the large, airy rooms. A band played as we went through the building, and we had a generous luncheon and received innumerable presents from the managers. Opportunity was given us for sundry little exploring trips into the suburbs of Manila.[11] We rode on horseback, in company with Secretary Dickinson, Governor Forbes and General Edwards, among little native shacks, through overgrown lanes beyond the city, and along the beach, where we saw fishermen's huts and men mending their nets, to the Polo Club. The Governor, who was most generous in giving money of his own to benefit the Islands, not only built the clubhouse and laid out the field at his own expense, but even imported Arabian horses and good Western ponies. This club is a fine thing to keep army officers in good condition and give them exercise and amusement, as well as to bring good horses into the Islands. The clubhouse, of plaited grasses, bamboo and wood, is on the edge of the beach, from which one can see the beautiful sunsets across the bay and catch the faint line of the mountains in the distance. It all seemed very far-away and tropical and enchanting. The English-speaking residents of Manila have various other clubs, among which the Army and Navy, the English, and the University are perhaps the most important. The Officers' Club, at Fort McKinley (seven miles from Manila) has a superb situation, commanding a fine view of the mountains.