The Philippine Islands and Their People 103 



much moisture, deposits a part of it as 

 rain. This is especially the case if 

 these air currents are forced up over 

 mountain ranges, since in rising they 

 are necessarily chilled. 



The Philippine Islands are mountain- 

 ous, and such air currents coming to 

 them from any direction are forced up- 

 ward to pass over the mountains into 

 cooler regions. Hence there is a heavy 

 precipitation on the windward side of 

 the islands, while the leeward side, be- 

 ing under descending air currents al- 

 ready partly deprived of their moisture, 

 receive little or no rain. The alternat- 

 ing winds of the Philippines, the trades 

 and the monsoons, thus produce alter- 

 nating wet and dry seasons. 



On the east coasts of Luzon, Samar, 

 and Mindanao, which face the Pacific, 

 the winter and spring, when the trades 

 prevail, is the rainy season. In most 

 other parts of the archipelago it is the 

 dry season. On the other hand, in the 

 monsoon season, when the wind is from 

 the southwest, the other, the westward- 

 facing coasts, have a wet season, while 

 the Pacific coasts are comparatively dry, 

 or, at least, get much less rain. Thus 

 at Manila there is practically no rain 

 from November to June, while during 

 the rest of the year the rainfall is heavy. 

 There are places in southern Luzon and 

 Samar where, owing to the fact that 

 the islands are low, the air currents 

 pass over them without losing much of 

 their moisture, and hence carry it west- 

 ward to be deposited elsewhere. Thus 

 at localities in the Visayan Islands, west 

 of these eastern coasts, the rainfall is 

 abundant even in the winter season. 



The total amount of rainfall ranges 

 in different parts of the archipelago 

 from 40 to more than ioo inches, the 

 precipitation being greatest on the Pa- 

 cific coast. At Manila it is about 60 

 inches, somewhat more than in the city 

 of Washington, and of this four-fifths 

 fall in the rainy season, between the 

 first of July and the end of October. In 



these months rain falls nearly every 

 day. The streets are flooded, the air is 

 saturated with moisture, and things are 

 covered with mould. 



THE PEOPLE 



All the larger islands are populated 

 more or less fully, and mainly by little 

 brown people of the Malay race. The 

 only people not of Malay origin are 

 the Chinese, Japanese, Americans, and 

 Europeans, and the Negritos, the orig- 

 inal inhabitants, who are found in small 

 numbers in the mountains of the in- 

 terior of Luzon and two or three other 

 islands. 



These brown people, both civilized 

 and uncivilized, are separated into many 

 tribes, and they are of all grades and 

 degrees of civilization, ranging from 

 cultivated gentlemen educated in the 

 universities of Europe, to the wildest of 

 head-hunters and the most timid of 

 tree-dwellers. Among them, found al- 

 most entirely in the cities and mainly 

 in Manila, are some three score thou- 

 sand Chinese, and a small sprinkling 

 of Japanese and East Indians. The 

 Chinese carry on most of the business 

 and do most of the hard manual labor 

 of the cities. The ruling element of the 

 whole consists of a small nucleus of 

 some ten or twelve thousand Americans. 



A classification of the natives by tribes 

 is a rough index to the degree of civili- 

 zation. The Tagalogs, occupying, in 

 the main, central Luzon, are the most 

 powerful and highly civilized; the Ilo- 

 canos in northwestern Luzon, the Bi- 

 cols in the southern part of the same 

 island, and the Visayans in the central 

 islands of Samar, Leyte, Cebu, Bohol, 

 and Panay, follow them closely in in- 

 telligence and civilization, as do also the 

 smaller tribes of Pangasinan,Pampanga, 

 Cagayan, and Zambales, in Luzon. 

 These are the eight civilized tribes. Of 

 these, the Visayans are far the most 

 numerous, numbering over 3,000,000 

 and forming 45 per cent of all. Next 



