The city squats around its old friend the river Pasig, and shakes hands with itself in the several bridges that bind one side to the other. On the right bank of the river, coming in from the bay and passing up by the breakwater, lies the old walled town of Manila proper, whose weedy moats, ponderous drawbridges, and heavy gates suggest a troubled past. Old Manila may be figured as a triangle, a mile on a side, and the dingy walls seem, as it were, to herd in a drove of church-steeples, schools, houses, and streets. The river is the boundary on the north, and the wall at that side but takes up the quay which runs in from the breakwater and carries it up to the Puente de España, the first bridge that has courage enough to span the yellow stream. The front wall runs a mile to the south along the bay front, starting at the river in the old fort and battery that look down on the berth where the Esmeralda lies, and is separated from the beach only by an old moat and the promenade of the Malecon, which, also beginning at the river, runs to an open plaza called the Luneta, a mile up the beach. The east wall takes up the business at that point, and wobbles off at an angle again till it brings up at the river fortifications, just near where the Puente de España, already spoken of, carries all the traffic across the Pasig. Thus the old city is cooped up like pool-balls, in a triangle three miles around, and the walls do as much in keeping out the wind as they do in keeping in the various unsavory odors that come from people who like garlic and don't take baths. Here is the cathedral--a fine old church that cost a million of money and was widowed of its steeple in the earthquakes of the '80s--and besides a lot of smaller churches are convent schools, the city hall, army barracks, and a raft of private residences. Opposite Old Manila, on the other bank, lies the business section, with the big quays lined with steamers and alive with movement. The custom-house and the foreign business community are close by the river-side, while in back are hundreds of narrow streets, store-houses, and shops that go to make up the stamping ground of the Chinese who control so large a part of the provincial trade. Everything centres at the foot of the Puente de España, which pours its perspiring flood into the narrow lane of the Escolta, and people, carriages, tram-cars, and dust all sail in here from north, east, south, and west. As on the other side, the busy part of the section runs a mile up and down the river and a mile back from it, while out or up beyond come the earlier residential suburbs. In Old Manila, the Church seems to rule, but on this side the Pasig the State makes itself felt, from the custom-house to the governor's palace--a couple of miles up stream.