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.