There are over 1,200 islands in the archipelago, but we do not know exactly how many there are. They have never been counted. Some of them are hardly more than bits of rock showing above the sea, while Luzon, the largest, is 480 miles long.
On all of the islands there are large mountains. Great peaks rise, in some cases to a height of 7,000 or 8,000 feet, covered to the very top with forests of mighty trees. The finest building timber in the world will some day come from these islands. Teak, ebony, mahogany, and cedar trees grow here, besides rubber and camphor trees, and many others for which there is great demand in all the markets of the world. Fine fruit trees of many sorts are also found. When there are good roads in the islands over which to haul logs, and modern mills and machinery to make them into lumber, the timber trade of the Philippines will be a great industry.
There are now about eight millions of people in the Philippines. How many were here when the Spanish came we do not know. The larger part of the people in the islands are of the Malay (mā´lā) race. These were not the first dwellers in the country, but came from the Malay Peninsula, and it is likely that they had not been here more than two or three hundred years when the Spanish came. They are the people whose lives and acts make up most of what we call the “history” of the islands, and they are the people usually meant by the term “Filipinos.”
ABORIGINES OF MINDANAO.
Up in the mountains, living in nearly as wild a state as when the Spanish came, we still find the aborigines. This is a word which means the first dwellers in a country. It is thought that the first people who lived in the northern islands were the Aetas, or Negritos. A race called the Indonesians (in dō nā´sē äns) are the aborigines of the great island of Mindanao.
The Negritos are dying out. They are a small, timid people, with thick lips and flat noses. Their hair is like curly wool. They hunt and fight with bows and arrows, and are very quick and active. Their chief food is fish, and the brown mountain rice which they plant and harvest. Even if taken when children and brought up in a city, they do not grow to like civilized life, but run away and go back to the mountains as soon as they have the chance.
An important tribe of wild people in these islands are the Igorrotes (ig ō rō´tēs), of whom there are many on Luzon. The Igorrotes are the finest and strongest of all the wild tribes in the country. They are very brave, and are good fighters, using in warfare a short, broad knife, which they wield with deadly skill. They never submitted to the Spaniards, and were badly used by that people. The Spaniards always made war upon them, and at one time tried to put an end to all of the tribe in Luzon. They burned their villages and killed all who fell in their power. They could not conquer them, however, and the Igorrotes have always hated the Spanish fiercely.
The civilized Filipino people spring from none of these wild tribes. As we have said, they are Malays, and came here from the great Malay Peninsula. The Malays, from earliest times, were a sea-going folk, daring sailors, and skillful in managing their boats. They went boldly to sea in tiny crafts, with only the stars to guide them, taking risks such as no Europeans dared to take. They overran the islands of the South Pacific, going even as far as the island of Madagascar. They settled in the Philippines, drove the natives back into the mountains, and made their homes along the coasts and on the rich plains. They had a written alphabet of their own when the Spanish came, and were far ahead, even then, of the native races.
The Malays who settled in the island of Mindanao were converted to the Moslem faith by some Arabian missionaries who came to that island as early as the twelfth or thirteenth century. From Mindanao this religion was carried to the island of Sulu (sö l´ö), and it is now the faith of the people of the entire Sulu archipelago. The people who held to this religion were called Moros by the Spanish, and by this name they are still known.