Читать книгу Beautiful Philippines: A Handbook of General Information онлайн

40 страница из 64

Pursuing your travels around Manila you see an admixture of the quaintly native, of the mediæval, and of the strictly modern. In architecture, you see splendid examples of Grecian, Moorish, Spanish, Renaissance, Gothic, and Byzantine. Likewise you see many native nipa houses, small yet cool and cozy, and exceedingly appropriate for the needs of the climate.

The new Trade School, Manila

Three Manilas For in reality there are three Manilas, which are still noticeable. First, there is the Manila of the original Malay, which, with its nipa shacks, its carabaos, and its quaint fishing boats, exists much as it did in the days of Raja Lacandola. Secondly, there is the Manila of the sixteenth and seventeenth century Spaniard—adventurer, merchant, and crusader in equal parts—who, in the churches and convents, the walls and gates, and the half-Moorish domestic architecture, has left ineffaceable memorials of the fact that this, the oldest of the European settlements in the East, was in its day among the chief glories of the “once imperial race.” Finally, there is the Americanized Manila of to-day, the town of electricity, motor cars, macadamized roads and sewers and steel bridges, well on its way to become one of the beautiful cities of the world.