the display of their toilettes, and not the enjoyment of nature.  In the hot season, all who can afford it are driven every evening along the [The Luneta.] dusty streets to a promenade on the beach, which was built a short time back, where several times a week the band of a native regiment plays fairly good music, and there walk formally up and down.  All the Spaniards [The Angelas.] are in uniform or in black frock coats.  When the bells ring out for evening prayer, carriages, horsemen, pedestrians, all suddenly stand motionless; the men take off their hats, and everybody appears momentarily absorbed in prayer.

[Botanical gardens.] The same governor who laid out the promenade established a botanical garden.  It is true that everything he planted in it, exposed on a marshy soil to the full heat of a powerful sun, soon faded away; but its ground was enclosed and laid out, and though it was overgrown with weeds, it had at least received a name.  At present it is said to be in better condition. [50]

[Pretty girls in gay garments.] The religious festivals in the neighborhood of Manila are well worth a visit, if only for the sake of the numerous pretty Filipinas and mestizas in their best clothes who make their appearance in the evening and promenade up and down the streets, which are illuminated and profusely decked with flowers and bright colors.  They offer a charming spectacle, particularly to a stranger lately arrived from Malaysia.  The Filipinas are very beautifully formed.  They have luxuriant black hair, and large dark eyes; the upper part of their bodies is clad in a homespun but often costly material of transparent fineness and snow-white purity; and, from their waist downwards, they are wrapped in a brightly-striped cloth (saya), which falls in broad folds, and which, as far as the knee, is so tightly compressed with a dark shawl (lapis), closely drawn around the figure, that the rich variegated folds of the saya burst out beneath it like the blossoms of a pomegranate.  This swathing only allows the young girls to take very short steps, and this timidity of gait, in unison with their downcast eyes, gives them a very modest appearance.  On their naked feet they wear embroidered slippers of such a small size that their little toes protrude for want of room, and grasp the outside of the sandal. [51]

[Dress of the poorer women.] The poorer women clothe themselves in a saya and in a so-called chemise, which is so extremely short that it frequently does not even reach the first fold of the former.  In the more eastern islands grown-up girls and women wear, with the exception of a Catholic amulet, nothing but these two garments, which are, particularly after bathing, and before they get dried by the sun, nearly transparent.