The quantity of hemp shipped during the years 1848 and 1849, was greater than the quantity indicated in either of these tables, but as the increased export was principally caused by speculation in the United States, the average annual export may probably not be greater than the amount set down in the table of 1850, although, in the previous year, about 30,000 peculs more were shipped.
Of the exports to the continent of Europe only a small proportion goes to Spain, probably not exceeding a third part of the quantities set down in the table for the continent.
Bremen, Hamburg, and Antwerp, are the three towns in the north with which most business is done, and Bordeaux and Havre de Grâce, are nearly the only places to which the other exports are shipped for Europe, exclusive of the ports of Cadiz, Malaga, and Bilboa, in the Peninsula.
Having furnished the preceding tables of the amount of the exports from the only outlet for foreign trade with the islands, excepting in rice to China, as before mentioned, the reader may be able to form some opinion of their veracity and value. And as it may be of some service, I shall give a short sketch of each of the most important of the articles there set down, premising it with a memorandum of the weights and measures now in use through the islands. The pecul is equal to 140 lbs. English, or 137 1/2 lbs. Spanish; the Spanish lb. being two per cent. heavier than the standard British lb. The quintal is 102 lbs. English, and the arroba 25 1/2 lbs. English. The cavan is a measure of the capacity of 5,998 cubic inches, and is subdivided into 25 quintas. The Spanish yard, or vara, is eight per cent. shorter than the British yard, by which latter all the cotton and other manufactures are sold by the merchants importing them, although the shopkeepers who purchase them retail everything by the Spanish yard.
It is not my intention, even were it in my power, which it is not, to attempt an exact and complete description of all the productions of the group of islands composing the Philippines, to which nature has with no niggardly hand dispensed great territorial and maritime wealth. And as the limits of this work prevent much expansion, I will confine the following observations to an outline of the principal articles produced in the country, beginning the catalogue with the most important of them all, namely, rice.