PHILIPPINE ISLANDS 



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PHILIPPINE ISLANDS 



of them wen- : in Spanish days, and 



their mo: iedly inferior to those 



of their mountain broth- re. Few of thorn un- 

 derstood Spanish or any one of the numerous 

 Filipino dial* ct.< hut their own. Work they 

 consider degrading. Their houses, though n 

 built in the trees or on stilts like those of the 

 wild- 9, were generally neat and well 



made bamboo and grass huts, but they wen 

 not so solidly put together as those of the 

 mountain men. 



What the Islands Are Like. The Philippines 

 are mountain ranges rising out of the sea, and 

 the islands are connected with each other and 

 with the other East Indies by submerged moun- 

 tains. Part of the land is volcanic in origin, 

 and there are a dozen active volcanoes, one of 

 which is Mount Apo in Mindanao, whose crest 

 is over 10,000 feet high. The general trend of 

 the mountain range is from north to south, but 

 there are innumerable rugged spurs which cut 

 the larger islands into many isolated sections. 

 Coral reefs fringe the shores, of which there are 

 altogether more than twice as many miles as 

 on all the coasts of the United States. In the 

 largest islands there are a few rivers, but they 

 have rapid descents, and except near the sea 

 are navigable only by rafts. 



Away from the mountain sides, where pines 

 are frequent, the vegetation of the Philippines 

 is typical of the tropics. Bamboos and ban- 

 yans, bananas and cocoanuts, palms, mangroves, 

 tree ferns, india rubber and gutta-percha and a 

 thousand other valuable trees cover much of 

 the land. Of several hundred fiber plants the 

 best known is a sort of banana called abaca, 

 from which comes the famous manila hemp, 

 for ropes, binder twine, cloth and manila paper. 

 Over half of the country bears a wild grass 

 about three feet high. Lumber forests occupy 

 40,000 square miles, and there are 200,000 mil- 

 lion board feet of valuable timber awaiting the 

 sawyer, more than in any state of the United 

 "3 except Washington, Oregon or Califor- 

 nia, and one-fourth as much as in all Canada. 



In spite of the belief that they were once 

 connected, the different islands do not have 

 the same animals. Palawan, the long, narrow 

 island in the southwest, and its neighbors have 

 zoological types familiar in Borneo but un- 

 known in the other Philippines. It is not al- 

 ways possible to tell which of the wild animals 

 are native and which have descended from do- 

 mesticated specimens brought by man. There 

 are, for instance, herds of wild water buffalo or 

 carabao (whose tame relatives are the work 



of the Filipinos) and wild hogs and deer. 

 Tin re are very few of the highest type of ani- 

 the mammals, or breast feeders. A wild 

 cat. squirrels, many hats, a lemur and a monkey 

 are found, and several peculiar genera known 

 nowhere else in the world. There are beauti- 

 fully-colored birds of many sorts, among them 

 parrots typical of the tropics, huge monkey- 

 oatching eagles from the mountains, and orioles, 

 larks, swallows and other forms familiar in 



COMPARATIVE AREAS AND DISTANT I ]S 

 Overlaid on the United States (lie Philippine 

 Islands would extend from Northern \\'i>( <m. in 

 to yearly the central part of r.cor-ia : from i-ast 

 to west the greatest width equals (lie distance 

 from eastern Tennessee to the western boundary 

 of Arkansas. 



America. Snakes large and small, flying liz- 

 ards, iguanas and crocodiles sometimes eighteen 

 feet long are the most common reptiles. 



Spanish Days. It was on the first voyage 

 round the world, in the spring, of 1521, that 

 Magellan discovered Mindanao, Ccbu, Bohol 

 and smaller islands, and fell while aiding one 

 native chieftain in a little intertribal battle. 

 Though by a treaty made eight years later 

 Spain relinquished all this part of the world 

 to Portugal, Spaniards from Mexico made a 

 permanent settlement at Cebu in 1565, and 

 founded Manila, their capital, in 1571. Near 



