The Philippines lie almost exactly on the other side of the globe from us. Approximately speaking, our noonday is their midnight; our sunset is their sunrise. There are some 1,200 of these islands, 400 of which are inhabited or capable of supporting a population; they cover about 125,000 square miles; they lie in the tropical seas, generally speaking, from five to eighteen degrees north latitude, and are bounded by the China Sea on the west and the Pacific Ocean on the east; they are about 7,000 miles southwest from San Francisco, a little over 600 southeast from Hong Kong, China, and about 1,000 almost due north from Australia; they contain between 5,000,000 and 8,000,000 inhabitants, about one-third of whom had prior to Dewey's victory, May 1, 1898, acknowledged Spanish sovereignty to the extent of paying regular tribute to the Spanish crown; the remainder are bound together in tribes under independent native princes or Mohammedan rulers. Perhaps 2,500,000 all told have become nominal Catholics in religion. The rest are Mohammedans and idolaters. There are no Protestant churches in the islands.
NATIVE HUNTERS, PHILIPPINE ISLANDS.
THE STORY OF DISCOVERY.
It was twenty-nine years after Columbus discovered America that Magellan saw the Philippines, the largest archipelago in the world, in 1521. The voyage of Magellan was much longer and scarcely less heroic than that of the discoverer of America. Having been provided with a fleet by the Spanish king with which to search for spice islands, but secretly determined to sail round the world, he set out with five vessels on August 10, 1519, crossed the Atlantic to America, and skirted the eastern coast southward in the hope of finding some western passage into the Pacific, which, a few years previous, had been discovered by Balboa. It was a year and two months to a day from the time he left Spain until he reached the southern point of the mainland of South America and passed through the straight which has since borne his name. On the way, one of his vessels deserted; another was wrecked in a storm. When he passed through the Straight of Magellan he had remaining but three of his original five ships, and they were the first European vessels that ever breasted the waves of the mighty western ocean. Once upon the unknown but placid sea—which he named the Pacific—the bold navigator steered straight to the northwest. Five months later, about March 1st, he discovered the Ladrone Islands—which name Magellan gave to the group on account of the thieving propensities of the natives—the word Ladrone meaning robber.
THE ESCOLTA, LOOKING SOUTH.
This is the Broadway of Manila. Along this famous street the principal retail shops of the city are situated. Chinese and half-castes are the principal retail merchants. At the time of the capture of the city by Admiral Dewey and General Merritt there were not over one dozen European merchants in Manila. Not one American firm was there; the last one, a Boston hemp dealer, having been driven out some years before.