The city and suburbs are well lighted, and the European quarters of the last are cleaner than the city.
The convents, which occupy nearly one third of the whole area of the city! are more distinguished for their size and massy architecture, than for their beauty. The church and convent of St. Augustine, and that of the Jesuits (now fast falling to decay), are, however, neat and well built. That of San Domingo is the most extensive.
The hospital of St. John of God, a military order of Knights Hospitallers, is extensive, but for want of funds, is but indifferently entertained. [130] There is also a university (St. Thomas), two colleges for the instruction of Indians and mestizos, and three convents of nuns, who receive girls to educate. There are also two schools for girls, both endowed by the piety of single individuals; the first of these being a Spanish lady, who came out from Spain for the express purpose of devoting herself to the education of Indian and mestizo girls! The other is that of a mestizo woman of the village of Binondo, a suburb of Manila.
There are some large houses, but they are generally ill-built and inconvenient, the rooms being often excessively large, and always badly laid out. The ground floor is used for warehouses, stables, &c. and always includes a large court-yard. The first floor only is inhabited. The architecture of the lower part is very massive, being often walls of solid masonry of eight or ten feet thick, with large arches from side to side, and connected with massy beams. At the height of the floor, these walls are discontinued, and on them are raised at distances clumsy pillars of brickwork, or at times of wood (which is seldom straight). These pillars are connected at the top by large joists in all directions, having wooden forelocks driven through them close to the pillars; and on this framework are laid the rafters for the tiled roof; the interstices of the pillars, and divisions of the rooms, being filled up with brick and plaster. The ends of the floor timbers being allowed to project over the walls, form a gallery of eight or ten feet in width along the front of the house, and round it when insulated: this gallery is boarded for about four feet in height in front, and then filled up with sliding windows, the small panes of which are filled with plates of thin mother-of-pearl shell, [131] forming one continued window, like the front of a hot-house. The communication to this gallery is by wide folding doors from the rooms, a large one having four or five, which thus admit light and air into the apartments; but the shell windows, when closed against the sun, transmit an intolerable heat, and the houses are not in general cool ones. The galleries are often used as dressing, and even as bathing rooms; and as they overhang the streets, the passenger is often sprinkled from them, in consequence of this dirty practice.