They are considered in China as a most dainty food, and are consumed by both the rich and the poor.
The breeds common in that country are apparently peculiar to itself, and they are apparently objects of more attention to their owners than elsewhere in Asia, the Celestials perhaps having an eye to their tender haunches, which bad treatment would toughen and spoil. They do not appear to be of greater sagacity than the other tropical breeds, although more bulky and stronger-looking than most of the other sorts I have seen.
All strangers coming to Manilla should endeavour to make an excursion to the great inland lake, or Laguna de Bay, as it is likely well to repay the inconvenience one has to stand in such an excursion from exposure to the sun, &c. The lake is of very considerable extent, measuring, I think, about twenty-eight miles at its greatest length, by about twenty-two at its extreme breadth; it is formed by an amphitheatre of mountains, the various streams from which feed it; and its opening or outlet forms the origin of the river Pasig, which, bathing the walls of the fortress of Santiago and the capital of the Philippines, flows into the arm of the sea called Manilla Bay.
About Christmastide there are many visitors to the lake, as from the then cooler season the necessary exposure to the heat of a midday sun in a slightly-covered boat is comparatively innocuous, and much less disagreeable than it would prove at any other time of the year.
Several foreigners are in the habit of making an annual excursion there from Manilla to spend these holidays, during which there is no other amusement in town than church-going and procession-staring.
Having made arrangements to visit the lake either by starting from Manilla in a large Pasig banca or prow, which although more tedious than driving to the village of Guadaloupe, near Pasig, and then taking the water, is, I think, the better plan of the two, as the river scenery is well worth seeing, and there are no inconveniences such as are inseparable from that of changing conveyances at Guadaloupe, &c. When I started, my companion, who luckily happened to be an experienced man in such affairs, having at different times of his life roamed through the backwoods of Canada, and over the plains of Australia, recommended the water conveyance for the whole distance, as we were not pushed for time; and the excursion turned out to be one of the pleasantest I have ever been engaged in, from the satisfactory nature of his arrangements and his own hilarity and good-natured usefulness; for of course he had not knocked about so much without acquiring some _savoir faire_, so desirable in a companion during such an excursion.
