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 by Philip II in 1585 but it was 1601 before it was actually opened. Earlier than this in 1593 there had been established a convent school for girls, the college of Saint Potenciana. In provisions for the sick and helpless, Manila at the opening of the seventeenth century was far in advance of any city in the English colonies for more than a century and a half to come. There was first the royal hospital for Spaniards with its medical attendants and nurses; the Franciscan hospital for the Indians administered by three priests and by four lay brothers who were physicians and apothecaries and whose skill had wrought surprising cures in medicine and surgery; the House of Mercy, which took in sick slaves, gave lodgings to poor women, portioned orphan girls, and relieved other distresses; and lastly, the hospital for Sangleyes or Chinese shopkeepers in the Chinese quarter. Within the walls the houses, mainly of stone and inhabited by Spaniards, numbered about six hundred. The substantial buildings, the gaily-dressed people, the abundance of provisions and other necessaries of human life made Manila, as Morga says, "one of the towns most praised by the strangers