Astride the bowsprit, pen in hand, writing a sto-o-rm at sea
XVI
THE ISLANDS "DISCOVERED" BY DEWEY
I arrived in Manila—not seasick—I never was seasick in my life (I've mentioned that before, haven't I?)—but anyone who read my last letter with that degree of attention necessary to get the meat out of letters of travel will have gathered that there was a bit of a blow coming over from Hong Kong, and that it was a rough crossing.
Those of my readers who regret that the bowsprit and I reached Manila are no friends of mine, and any invidious remarks they may make about my last letter are of no consequence to me.
The Philippine Islands are a tropical group. There are about 3,000 of them. They lie between five degrees and twenty degrees north latitude, and one hundred and seventeen degrees and one hundred and twenty-seven degrees east longitude, and they contain 120,000 square miles of land.
The Pacific Ocean washes their eastern boundaries and the China sea the western. The largest islands are Luzon and Mindano—Luzon with about 40,000 square miles and Mindano with 36,000. About 400 of the islands are inhabited.
They are quite a big chunk of land, as big as New England, New York, and New Jersey. Winter never comes; three crops of corn can be raised on the same piece of ground in a year, and six crops of corn fodder.
While they are mountainous, they are not so mountainous as Japan, and have broader valleys of rich, fertile land. They are pretty nearly as large as Japan, without its new possessions of Formosa and Korea, the difference in area being about 170,000 square miles in Japan against 120,000 in the Philippines. They are just a little shy of having 9,000,000 inhabitants, who are chocolate brown in color, have straight hair, and in stature are about the size of the Japanese.
Admiral George Dewey of the American navy discovered these islands May 1, 1898. No one except the natives knew anything about them until that momentous date in history.