For four long years, slaughter and destruction have ravaged one of the fairest lands on earth, converting what might be a paradise into a pandemonium.
What evils have these poor Tagals not suffered in that time? Arbitrary imprisonment, torture, confiscation of property, banishment to unhealthy places, military executions, bombardments, the storming and burning of towns, indiscriminate slaughter, and the bubonic plague, added to the calamities they are always exposed to—volcanic eruptions, floods, earthquakes, typhoons, locusts, epidemics.
Famine seems to be the only calamity they have been free from, but even that may not be far distant.
[1] I think, in view of the German atrocities in Africa, including many cases of flogging women, that this epithet is well earned.
Chapter XIV.
Resources of the Philippines.
At the Spanish conquest—Rice—the lowest use the land can be put to—How the Americans are misled—Substitutes for rice—Wheat formerly grown—Tobacco—Compañia General de Tabacos—Abacá—Practically a monopoly of the Philippines—Sugar—Coffee—Cacao—Indigo—Cocoa-nut oil—Rafts of nuts—Copra—True localities for cocoa palm groves—Summary—More sanguine forecasts—Common-sense view.