Map of the Philippine Islands
“And the earth possesses no scenes more beautiful than those to be found in this verdant and blooming archipelago * * * this magnificent rosary of glowing islands, that Nature has hung above the heaving bosom of the warm Pacific * * * with the vast variety of attractive scenery, mountain and plain, lake and stream, everywhere rich with glossy leafage, clustered growths of bamboo and palm, fields of yellow cane and verdant coffee-groves.”
⁂
“Views of lands and sea and sky, beautiful, gorgeous, awe-inspiring; of historic spots and buildings, monuments, ruins * * * of peoples familiar and strange; of industries modern to the minute, or old, as old as the Pharaohs, the patient work of potter and weaver, of craftsman, artisan, woodman, fisherman, husbandman; of peoples primitive and cultured—races and nations, distinct, assimilated and assimilating foreigners—foreigners whose descendants a few generations later will be Filipinos—the Filipino Nation that is to be, in that wonderland, the Philippines.”
⁂
“Lived ever a man or a people on an island, however insignificant and bleak and bare, without feeling for it pride and love? Call to mind poem and song, picture and tale; the history of island races.
“Behold, then, the Philippines: thousands of islands, great and small beautiful, bountiful beneath a benignant sky. Seek to know how Truth paints them, and understand and sympathize with their people’s fervid desire to call them their very own.”