The Letters of Nicholas Loney (13)

Letter No. 13

Iloilo

July 5^th, 1857

My dear Nanny,

My last respects were dated May 23^rd and I am since in receipt of your esteemed favours of Feb. 28^th and March 27^th. No vessel has left this town for Manila since the 25^th of June, and at that time I couldn’t exactly find an appropriate moment for sitting down to write, so that you good people will again have a month’s exemption from the usual postal tax on letters from the “Islas Filipinas.”

I commence this letter, as one usually does these familiar communications, without the faintest notion of what I am going to say. All I seem to be conscious of at present is that I am seated in my solitary sala this drowsyish Sunday afternoon; that a subdued roar of waves comes up from the sea beach, mingled with a nearer sound of rustling trees; that the time piece shows that another hour has dropped into eternity since noon, and that it wouldn’t be a bad thing to have a glass of eau sucree[i] or an orange or something of a like refrigerant nature.

The above leisurely beginning of what I intended should be a long letter was untimely disturbed by the apparition of our local poet, Don Vicente Rico, who frequently bursts in here on Sundays and entertains me with vehement disquisitions on literature and things in general, gesticulating about the room, and screaming at the top of his voice, as the manner of some poets is. He has just vanished, with an explosion of laughter at a kind of pun on the name of the vessel (the Aviso) which should bring on our advices from Manila, but which is making a very long voyage.

Now it’s very close upon dinner-time (which with me is half past four) and my letter writing pretensions must be limited for the present to finishing off this most inane of pages.

The weather has been very bad here lately – raining and blowing constantly, and I have been out of doors very little, and seen scarcely anything of anybody, spending my evenings in great measure “to dull forgetfulness a prey” in yonder chair.

There’s another squall – about the tenth today – reminding me of A. Smith:

Down comes the frantic rain

We hear the wail of the remorseful winds

In their strange penance. And this wretched orb

Knows not the taste of rest; a maniac world,

Homeless and sobbing through the deep she goes.

And here I go “like a great hungry soul” (to use the same author’s words, very differently applied) to shout the magic words “Trae la comida!” which being interpreted, mean “Bring the dinner.” A responsive “Si señor” from two young servitors comes cheerily up from the kitchen, giving hopes of the early apparition of my soup, my piece of beef, my fish, my side dishes, my sweetmeats, my cheese and my pale ale.

I have dined alone now for a great many months together. The Spaniards are not a dinner-giving people, except to particular friends, so I am likely to continue eating solitary meals, unless I take to dinner-giving myself, which thing economy forbids.

July 13^th. This vessel has been detained by bad weather, and I have left this scrawl unfinished until now. It is a fact that I have nothing in particular to say at present. Carmen Kierulf has gone to Manila, with the old Coloner – she, to visit Mrs. Sturgis and see the beloved one, and he to report himself to the new Captain General. Dolores is left alone, to sigh after the delights of the Philippine metropolis and haply lament the absence of any Caballero (gentleman) to fill the aching void in her dolorous heart. Talking of Señoritas (pronounced Senyoreetas) there is a rather pretty one who lives just opposite me; her name is Antonia Aldeguer, country-born, and daughter of one of the Spanish traders here. Decidedly pretty, I repeat, a stunning dancer, and a prospective heiress of some thousands of dollars; but Lord, Sir, her mind is like a weedy garden.

Did I tell you that friend Edward Jackson, who I have formerly mentioned to you, has been married at Manila? He actually has, to a young woman of the name of Juana Zaragoza, and I presume that he must have professed Roman Catholicism before doing so – that being a sine qua non with the priests. What would Mrs. Jackson of Church St. Kingston Surry and her two Protestant daughters say if they knew this?

But to return to Iloilo – though I don’t know why we should, as I have at present nothing very interesting to remark about it. Yesterday evening I drove out to Jaro to visit the Padre at the convent, with whom I am on cordial sort of term – which may be illustrated by the fact of his wanting to lend me the other day any amount of tin he might have, or I might require. He derives a very good income from the large town of Jaro – upwards of $6,000, or L1,600 a year. We talked about the sugar crops, and the future greatness of Iloilo, and abused the Government in good set terms for not opening the ports before, or extinguishing the tobacco monopoly, and drank sugar and water ad lib. The padre is very desirous of seeing the foreign trade commenced, for seeing that it will give a great start in time to this province, in which he will probably end his days, as none of the priests here are allowed to return to Europe.

As this foreign trade arrangement has occupied my thoughts and pen for a considerable time, and I see some hopes of getting it brought about, I am sometimes foolish enough to ask myself whether it was a destiny reserved for me to be instrumental in some way in the matter, and whether my long sojourns in S. America and Manila were a kind of preparation thereunto… questions to which a candid negative is the only reply possible – especially as the thing is still in embryo, and may not come to pass in my time.

Well, after returning from Jaro, I went and had a delightful bath in the sea by a dim moonlight. There is a beautiful sandy beach here, as smooth as a carpet and as firm as a board. Into this I poke my stick, and on the stick my garments, and setting Doroteo to watch that it doesn’t flow away, I plunge into the briny deep, to a cautious extent for fear of sharks. This morning I drove to Jaro to call on the Lt. Governor to return and lend some books, but found him not at home; so I returned, lolling back magnificently in my vehicle, and looking benignly at sundry hatdoffing clodhoppers met on the road. Talking of carriages you and Robert seem to think my having one a sort of event. Carriages however, are gammon – I have been so used to riding about in them for the last ten years that I look upon them “as naught.”

My domestic affairs get on much as usual. Domingo had another row with his wife, and had recourse to a stick to stop her tongue. From what I could make out of the quarrel, he had taken to billiard playing at a table to which the fast youths of the pueblo resort, and which is a few yards from my house. Billiard-playing might – and perhaps had been – in her opinion, the means of plunging him into further depths of depravity – and hence the perpetual lifting up of a shrill and accusatory voice. I remonstrated with the excited parties, forbade the billiard table on pain of terrific punishment, and restored the interrupted harmony – which will be destroyed again before very long no doubt. The mother-in-law has lately come from Manila - a fattish old woman with the long hair reaching to the ground. The coachman, Mr. Victor, I have lately had to thrash to a moderate extent for disappearing o’ nights. Doroteo has been having fights with Victor, and was lately laid up for a long time with a bruised instep from a kick from that functionary. Mariano is strongly suspected of frequenting the billiard room for some sinister purpose, though he is hardly tall enough to use a cue. His last enormity was to go and invest a dollar – which I had given him for clothes to be bought by his mother – in a couple of yards of trashy cotton drill with brilliant green stripes. It appeared on the trial that he went to Jaro market with his mother and the dollar, and that perceiving this fascinating piece of stuff, he suddenly disappeared, and was afterwards discovered, minus the money, but mentally rich in the possession of a gorgeous piece of trousering worth about nine pence. I decided that he was never to be entrusted with any more money, and blew up his unfortunate old parent for not exercising stricter surveillance over her imaginative son. My cats have all disappeared. They got frightened at the bustle of removing from Jaro, and couldn’t be caught afterwards. The little poodle dog is as defiant as ever, and still treats men as his natural enemy. Not so a beautiful coach dog given me as a pup by Doña Federica – a good-natured, useless animal, which serves as an ornament to the corridor, where he is generally to be seen lying about.

But “something too much of this,” as somebody said about something. I will make few or no comments on your two last letters. They are both of them dated from Croft, where you seem to be given up to washing days and looking after the smaller branches of the family tree.

I don’t know whether chronicling small beer entered on the round of your avocations, but am rather scandalized that your reading should have been reduced to two numbers of the “Family Herald.” Have you read “Aurora Leigh?” and having read it do you not intend to give us something of like sort? Seriously, I shall continuously admonish you until I see you enrolled among the feminine writers of the day. Why don’t you go into descriptions of Social Life, some phrases of which you are well qualified to hold the mirror up to, like a female Thackeray, drawn rather milder – and as to style, yours is A-1, and getting better every year. Let’s have that sonnet of W. Marston’s in your next. As for me, my education was far too imperfect to enable me to do anything; and I haven’t power enough to make up the want by reading – in the reading line I am about as barren as you described yourself to be. Scarcely get through my English reviews and newspapers, and lend all my “Revues de Deuz Mondes” to other fellows, before getting a look at ‘em. I always manage to get a few pages of something scanned over at night in bed, without which operation I can never settle down to sleep – such is the force of habit. Over one’s chocolate in the morning little snatches of reading may be done; but as you remarked some time ago, most of this sort of reading is mere mental dissipation – a sort of shirking of something else which one ought to be doing. I hope to have better accounts of john than you give in your last but fear that remorseless disease will at most but relax its hold with the remedies prescribed. Let me know how Lizzie gets on under anything but reassuring circumstances which Father mentions. I note Henry’s doings on the coast – and am rather inclined to agree with him in his declamation against the coloured race. Here we have a set of deceitful, lazy vagabonds, who require a constant application of the bamboo – not but that there are exceptions and some good traits in the native character – which I can’t stop to point out, this country would go ahead much faster if there were some available means of coercion to make the natives work on the estates – on many of which of great part of the crop perishes for want of hands to help the proprietor through in time of need.[ii]

What has become of John Sparkes? I have lost sight of his movements, but don’t think he has gone to Singapore – I wish those two P&O steamers now running from Singapore to Manila would touch here. They would be glad enough to do so if the Government weren’t so Japanese. Doña Federica is expected to present Don Emilio with a son or daughter shortly – they are building a new Government house her, but it will take a long time to finish it. I have got to the end of this stupidest of screeds. Give my love to Mary when you write or see the cove, and believe me to be your lovely – loving I mean – brother,

NICK LONEY

P.S. Your Croftian violets – if a few fragments of mouldings can be so called – came on all right, and are preserved religiously. Some day I hope to gather some on the same spot myself, and take some of those walks which you, to my great envy, described.

---

[i] Sugar and water.

[ii] Here Loney voices the common complaint of Europeans, little realizing the reasons for it.

The Letters of Nicholas Loney (12)

Letter No. 12

Jaro, Iloilo

February 24^th, 1857

Per “Nueva Consolacion”

To Manila

My dear Nanny,

When the present writer was a clerk in the firm Ker and Co. a wily practice obtained in the correspondence department, ingeniously calculated to avoid exciting the ire of long-unwritten-to correspondents. When the correspondent had been duly addressed by the previous mail, attention was boldly directed to the fact that “We had this pleasure on the 15^th ult. and now beg to resume our market advices.” But when the miserable constituent had been passed over for some time, and the last epistle to him was only to be discovered in remote pages of the letter-book, after much searching through the index, then all allusion to dates was dropped, and the letter timidly commenced with “Since we last had this pleasure, our market for sugars, etc.” I don’t pretend to think that my occasional epistolary scraps can possess the same interest as those exciting accounts of a rise of the reals in sugars, or an unexpected fall to four and seven pence on bills at Cmss. bit as it strikes me that I haven’t written to you for a period which we will express by the convenient term “an age,” I must beg you to imagine all the overwhelming reasons which I might adduce to account for the fact and allow me to begin as coolly as if I had “had this pleasure on the 15^th ult.”

Your last letters are dated Oct. 2^nd and Nov. 3^rd, the latter giving cover to a highly interesting document from my young friend Annie, with an elegantly cut but slightly fantastic border. Tell the gentlewoman I thank her and shall be happy to reply to her communication as soon as she furnishes me with the true reading of the curious cuneiform characters she has adopted – which up to the present time had baffled all my attempt at interpretation. All your interesting news is duly appreciated, and I note by your last that Henry had gone off to that disagreeable place of exile for a couple of hot, monotonous years, in obedience to the fiat of that insane Admiralty. Why don’t they send him to China where, after heaping laurels and advantages from the present war, his vessel might perhaps have been dispatched on a special mission to Panay?

As for the undersigned, he resigns himself to undergo his years of exile, hoping they will prove to be the identical “years that bring the philosophic mind,” of which latter commodity he has at present, when things don’t go on smoothly with his storehouse project, when most of his goods won’t sell, and when he himself is notably dissatisfied with his own interior man or Ego – some slight need.

When, tulipa mia, I have little to tell you on this occasion for this vessel, this “New Consolation,” leaves tomorrow morning, and today (shall I recklessly say it?) I am in a dull uncommunicative mood, with a slight dash of grimness tempered by a strong propensity to go into a Budhistical state of Nirvana on that hard-bottomed couch. For the afternoon is hot, though a lazy breeze comes in at the windows and blows my straggling papers all about the floor. The cocks crow dreamily all about the drowsy town, most of whose inhabitants are at present plunged in deep siestas. The shadows of long coconut leaves float dreamily along the adjoining roofs, an old woman smokes a beatific ‘baccy at the opposite window; my whole household, including my two dogs, is stretched out in various attitudes in the kitchen, and though animated by the “best intentions” I cannot bit feel the opiate influence of the time. Candidly, I really begin to think that though to receive any amount of letters from home is very proper and delightful, to write any in return must wholly superfluous if not absurd. What do you think of that theory? It seems eminently rational when your Fahrenheit stands appealingly at 89. I am now going to stretch out my corporeity on the sofa for a bit, with a volume of Goethe’s autobiography and travels and will let you know if I change my mind.

Now that little fit of laziness being over, I will proceed with this small note before leaving shortly for Molo, where I am going to find out my blessed probable contractor for the new store house, who was to have gone with me a day or two ago to take a look at my proposed site, but who is at present laid up with sore eyes. I have not been much at Iloilo lately that is to say, within the last ten days. Sometimes the Spanish tertulias don’t possess any attraction for me, in spite of the affability of the Governor and the presence of the amiable Señoritas C. and D. I long to talk English with somebody, and exchange the politeness of the Don for the careless heartiness of the Briton. None of the fellows from Manila have been able to come this way, and I doubt if any of them can afford the time. I am living much in my usual manner “as before,” except that my conveyance gives me much more power of locomotion – though on reflection I think I used to go about much more when I had to avail myself of hired carriages and my own motive powers.

Sometime ago I prodigally subscribed to all manner of papers and periodicals, and now receive the “Spectator,” “Leader,” “Westminster” and “National Reviews” and the “Review des Deux Mondes” – great extravagance, you very properly remark, but a man in this forgotten dot of the universe must have a little mental pabulum of some kind, so as to get a faint inkling of what is going on in the European world. My trip into the country the other day with Don Emilio Carles did not supply any very striking adventures though it was very pleasing – a great event was the losing of Don Emilio’s solar hat overboard in a squall – another, our visiting certain enormous caves full of stalactites and stalagmites, and a murky cavern whence issued dreadful mephitic vapours which put out the lights and put a stop to my enterprising attempts to go in and win.

February 25^th. I must put a sudden end to this very paltry note and send it to Iloilo. I think I shall remove to that interesting seaport in a few days – apologize to Mary for me for not answering her note yet, and give her my love. With apologies for such a shabby missive believe me to be, dear Nanny,

Your most affectionate brother,

NICHOLAS LONEY

The Letters of Nicholas Loney (11)

Letter No. 11

Jaro, Iloilo

February 23rd, 1857

My dear Father,

I find that I have again rather overstepped my limit of time for writing home – more than a month having passed since I last wrote you on January 11^th. I have, however, no very startling intelligence to communicate from this remote corner of the world.

I mentioned in my last letter that I was on the point of starting on an expedition to the interior of the island. Said expedition was duly accomplished, and we returned to our household duties on the 23^rd ult. after an absence of 12 days, during which we travelled through most of the northern portion of the island. Part of the trip was done on foot – in places where no roads have yet been made – a few leagues on horseback, and the rest in an American “spider” carriage with four horses. We visited 14 of the 35 pueblos (towns) which the province of Iloilo contains – many of them populous enough to be ranked as large towns, and others only classable as villages.

We went through a series of fine tracts of land, both cultivated and non-cultivated, capable of raising anything producible within the tropics. Saw little of any of the crops, except the portion of sugar yet uncut. The rice crop was cut in December. In the tobacco districts the young seedlings were just being planted out. The weather was very wet and unfavourable during most of the journey, and the roads consequently bad, but we managed to get on very well, putting up with all the friars at all the convents on the way – their reverences treating us remarkably well in the matters of chocolate, breakfasts, dinners and suppers.

On the whole I draw most favourable inferences as to the future of this fine island when the capabilities of its fertile soil become developed. The project of getting up a business with the American firm referred to in my last still holds good; but I have been almost at a standstill ever since, from inability to get the necessary stone building commenced. There having been only one regular stone building ever erected at Iloilo (that by a former Governor with every command of laborers, etc. for getting it done) it is difficult to get any of the natives or mestizos to undertake to build a large stone go-down by contract. There is another great drawback in relation to a proper site. The ground in the neighbourhood of Iloilo is very flat, and in the immediate vicinity of the river nothing more or less that a mangrove swamp inundated by the tide at high water. In order, therefore, to build anything by the water side it is necessary to fill up with earth to a considerable extent, so as to get a firm platform for the foundation. Those sites which are already reclaimed from the swamp in this way are already either occupied by (cane and palm thatched) private stone houses, or not purchaseable from their present owners. Consequently I have had to look out for a new site, which will have to be filled in at a considerable expense if I finally decided to adopt it.

Here is a rough outline which will perhaps enable you to form an idea of the present state of the case. The difficulty is the long extent of road which would have to be made, and which would cost $1000 (over) besides the many obstacles in the way of getting a stone building constructed at an (at present) isolated point to which everything, including the fresh water necessary for mixing lime, would have to be conveyed by water, as the road would not be made until the completion of the building. The stone and the tiles for the roof will have to come from Manila, the supplies of stone in the neighbourhood being only obtainable from the coral formations and other strata of the island of Guimaras where, however, enough workmen cannot be collected to produce a sufficient quantity in a reasonable space of time. In fact, it is at all times difficult to get a sufficient permanent number of workmen here for any object. The Indians are so woefully apathetic and so fond of their ease, that as soon as they earn a real or two, nothing will induce them to work while a cent remains. Add to this the difficulty of meeting with a suitable contractor and it will not be a matter for surprise if so simple a work as an oblong building with only a ground floor, and consisting of four stone walls and a tiled roof, occupy fully 12 months in building.

After confabulating with several mestizos, none of whom could eventually make up their minds to enter into a contract, I have at length met with one who promises to send in a calculation of his terms in a few days. If they seem reasonable, and the house (company) at Manila approves of the design of making a road of the length indicated on the other side, proceedings will be commenced as soon as possible. If the expense of the road is objected to, shall probably fix on a site much nearer to the reclaimed land though the ground there is very low and muddy, and the water for ships discharging not quite so deep.

All this is very slow work, you will think, before even making a beginning, but this is the most astonishing place for not being able to do anything out of the usual course of things I ever saw. When the go-down is finally built (if that consummation ever comes to pass) I hope to see it constantly filled and refilled with produce, though I don’t expect this will be the case to a satisfactory extent unless the Manila firm determiners engaging in the direct foreign trade, and with this idea I wrote them a few days ago that they must keep in view that, in proposing to them to authorize the expense of the whole concern, I look much more to the foreign trade here that may be done hereafter, as unless you can afford to give much better rates than others (which can only be done for a foreign and not the Manila market). It will be difficult to secure such a quantity of produce as will repay the outlay for some time. The very high prices which have been ruling in Europe for sugar for some time past have raised the rates in Manila to an unprecedented figure, so that there is a great inducement for natives and mestizos to plant any amount of sugar.

In the matter of imports I am not doing much. I have received another consignment of 12 cases of piece goods since I last wrote, the greater part of which are disposed of, but until I get to Iloilo and have a regular place for a sort of piece goods warehouse or shop, nothing very brilliant can be done. My house at Iloilo – though I have been promised possession from week to week – is not yet ready, and I have ceased to speculate as to when it will be. The landlord has not begun yet to paint it inside. My vehicle has come, a splendiferous affair, costing with harness, etc., $500, built at Manila by a British coachmaker – rather a large sum – I formerly calculated on somewhere between $350 to $400, but it better to have a good article which will sell again than a rattletrap which would have to be sent to Manila every now and then for repairs.

There is great trouble in the Philippines just now about the currency question – silver is at a premium of 25% and nobody will look at gold if they can help it. For my current expenses I am obliged to give small bills on Manila for which I get the silver here. These bills are paid in silver at Manila at a charge to me of course of the current premium which being at present as just mentioned 25%, is rather a pull on one’s salary – not to mention the high rate of house rent. I attach very little importance, however, to these small financial evils.

I am sorry to say that the answer about the steamer between this place and Manila has been received, and is to the effect that the capitalists at Camarines have lately gone into so many and such important negocios that they are not free at present to take up the steamer project seriously – so there is an end in the meantime at all events, to my schemes in that direction. The idea will probably be taken up by someone before long, although in this un-enterprising country it is impossible to say how long a time will elapse before there is a regular mercantile steam communication in this important archipelago. At present there are three steamers which ply between places at a short distance from Manila, but they are wretchedly small things, two of them only about six horsepower each. When you write next to Bob please mention that nothing appears likely to come of the steamer notion. I hope that you have put yourself to little or no trouble in getting the particulars I asked for – though they will always be useful, and may some day turned to account. I will write to Robert at some future time, when things here assume a more definite shape. Meanwhile, if he decides to take on a merchant ship on leaving the “Orion” I think the Australian and Manila line as likely a one as any, and may perhaps by that time be in a position to give him a cheap cargo.

You will have seen in the papers the account of the present state of affairs in the south of China. The southern Chinese mind now seems to be so effectually roused against foreigners, that although the British may take Canton and do any amount of damage along the coast, it may be very difficult to again resume the former commercial relations with them. J. Taurus, however, must (maugre the Persian war) carry out what he has undertaken to do, and hold Canton for some time, or it will never be a fit place for foreigners to live in.

I am at present engaged in a slip-slop sort of way in getting up my official report on Panay, which I am afraid I have already delayed too long. It will be a very lame affair, as my head is not worth a ½ d and there is not a scrap of statistical information to be had about the place.

I hope this will find you all well – glad to hear that Aunt Kitty was in such good health and spirits. The mail from Europe of December arrived here yesterday, but I have no letters or papers from Manila. I suppose they came by some vessel. For the present you must please take this rigmarole letter as an epistolary installment to A/C. With love to Mother and all at home I remain, my dear Father,

Your affectionate son,

NICHOLAS LONEY

The Letters of Nicholas Loney (10)

Letter No. 10

Jaro

Jan. 11^th, 1857

My dear Father,

Since writing you as far back as November 24^th last, I have had since the pleasure of receiving your valued and interesting letter of Oct. 22. Having been somewhat occupied the last few days, and rather at a loss for time to finish sundry letters for Manila, I must beg you to excuse me for not writing more than a few lines by this opportunity, which leaves early on the morning. You will be pleased to learn that the letter to an American friend alluded to in my last lines was productive of some effect. On the part of Russell and Sturgis he writes me that they are prepared to advance funds to the extent of $12-15,000 to build a camarin (go-down) of stone, and go into produce operations. I expect the first remittance in money by an early opportunity, and have already secured a piece of ground on the side of the creek for building on; at present the business will be in the coasting trade to Manila, but I am endeavouring to get them to commence direct shipments from this place to Europe, Australia, and America (although they don’t think it quite feasible yet); I have hopes of bringing about a direct export trade in time. I shall have some difficulty in getting a stone building properly erected here, especially as the water lots are swampy and require a good deal of filling in, but I shall let you know from time to time how things are getting on. If the projected produce operations turn out satisfactory R & S are prepared to extend them as far as possible; though unless they send me some foreign ships (as I am continually impressing on them) much will not be done for some time, there being a good many competitors, and produce – though increasing rapidly each year – still scarce. They proposed that I should take a share in the profit or loss of the coming transactions, but I prefer to act merely as their agent for a commission, as the loss of a vessel, (there being no insurance) or any untoward event, might knock me financially speaking on the head.

I am sorry that there is no answer from Camarines about the steamer project, but it is expected soon, though I am always inclined to augur that it will not be very encouraging for the present. I think that before very long, however, the scheme will be got to work in some quarter or other, especially as the Government has just sent an engineer officer from here to commence working the Cebu coal mines which will yield very good coal at an easy distance from the sea. Cebu is about 30 leagues from Iloilo. Mr. Ker is still at Batavia – I have a letter from him dated in October in which he says he doesn’t know when he will get back to Manila, and adds promiscuously, “I liked your relations very much.” I expect he will have to stop a long time at Batavia and give up his Australian trip.

For a quiet place like this we have been rather dissipated lately. A ball and a dinner on New Year’s day, another dinner and ball on the 6^th, and this morning a big breakfast at the Lieutenant Governor’s, not to speak of a very grand ball given tonight by the principal native of the place to this latter functionary, for which I am about (it now being 8 o’clock) to dress. The Lt. Gov. is about to leave, which I am sorry, for he fraternized with me considerably; but his successor seems to be also a very good specimen. The Lt. Gov. here is a legal functionary, who decides in civil and legal cases beyond the sphere of the Governor who is a military man. At the second dinner alluded to, which took place at the Government house, the L.G. insanely proposed “the health of Her Majesty, Queen Victoria of England, and that of her worthy representative in this province.” I, of course, looked unutterable things. At these dinners, breakfasts and balls there have generally been some 35 to 40 Europeans present, some from other parts of the province.

Tomorrow morning early I start in the “Rosalia” with the Governor to accompany the No. 2 functionary part of the way on his voyage. We disembark at the little archipelago called Selanyan, formerly alluded to by me, and then the Governor and myself ride across the country and through the northern towns of the province, to tobacco districts and as far as the Capiz boundary and perhaps pay a flying visit to the chief town of Capiz itself. I am glad of this opportunity of seeing something of the interior so as to be able to speak in my report “as one having authority” from actual experience.

We shall probably be away from this town for about 10 to 12 days. I have Nanny’s and Henry’s welcome letters of October 2^nd; the latter I will answer before long, but for the present will not insult the brilliant writer of the former with a frantic scrap which would be all I would manage by this conveyance. I hope Henry won’t remain long at his present unattractive station. Your accounts of the “E. Bell” and the “Rose Ellis” are still far from reassuring. I regret to see.

Col. Charles told me this morning the Government had approved of his projected lighthouses, and ordered them to be commenced forthwith, which is a good thing. The buoys are also to be laid down. I am rather afraid of the proposed business, the collection of produce requiring so much caution and experience, and more activity that I can afford to spare. If only I can get the foreign trade direct; once set going it would be all right. I expect to get to Iloilo next month. My house there will cost me $35 per month at the usual exchange of 4.6 per dollar ($) equal to L94 per annum. I must now be off to join the Terpsichorean crew – though my part will be confined to the ornamental wall-flower department, as N.L. doesn’t super-add dancing to his other accomplishment. With best love to Mother and all, I remain my dear Father

Your affectionate son,

NICHOLAS LONEY