THE MOUTH OF THE PASIG RIVER.
The city of Old Manila is surrounded by water. On the west is the sea, to the north is the Pasig River, while moats, connected with the river by sluices, flank the other two sides. All the principal warehouses of the city are on the Pasig, and ships deliver and receive their cargoes direct, without the necessity of cartage.
OUR NEW POSSESSIONS (CONTINUED).
THE LADRONE, OR MARIANA ISLANDS.
It was a welcome sight to Magellan and his crew when, one day in March, nearly 400 years ago, they beheld the verdant and beautifully sloping hills of the Ladrone Islands. Eighteen weary months before they had sailed from the coast of Spain, and all that time, first to the southwest and then to the northwest, they had followed the setting sun. Theirs were the first vessels manned by white men that had ever plowed the trackless Pacific; and this was the first land ever seen by white men within that unknown ocean.
It was a pitiable crew on those three small, weather-beaten ships, who drew, that March morning, toward the coast of the present island of Guam, which is now a possession of the United States. Hunger and thirst had driven them to the verge of madness. They had eaten even the leather thongs from their sail fastenings, and only a small mug of water per day was the portion of drink for a man. "Land! Land!!" It was a glad cry from the watch aloft. There were palm trees, cocoanuts, green grass, tropical fruits, an abundance of fresh water, and—though naked—a curious and friendly people. No wonder Magellan paused to rest himself and his sailors.
Those little islands have never been of much value, and never can be. Seventeen of them stretching in a row about six hundred miles from north to south, and their total area, including their islets and reefs, is variously estimated at from 400 to 560 square miles. Hence, there is but about one-fourth more territory on the whole seventeen islands combined than is included within the corporate limits of the city of Greater New York.
A broad channel divides the Ladrones into two groups. The northern group consists of ten islets, without inhabitants; the southern group has seven islands, four of which are inhabited. The largest island, Guahan, known to us as Guam, ceded to us by Spain, was taken by our warship Charleston on July 4, 1898. This island contains the only town in the colony. Its full Spanish name is San Ignacio de Agaña. It is the capital of the archipelago, and contains more than half of the whole population.
THE NATIVE INHABITANTS.