
24 PEOPLES OF THE PHILIPPINES 
thousand feet attained by Mount Mayon in Luzon and 
Kanlaon in Negros, of nearly nine thousand feet by 
Mount Halecon in Mindoro, and of over ten thousand 
feet by Mount Apo in Mindanao, are by no means in- 
conspicuous. ‘The country in general, therefore, is 
distinctly rugged, and the dominant feature of the geog- 
raphy is the juxtaposition of the sea and of steep 
ranges and high peaks with only a narrow belt of rich 
alluvial coast intervening. 
It is this lowland region that has always held the bulk 
of the population. ‘Two-thirds of the modern inhabi- 
tants live on the coast, one-third in the interior. With 
an estimated eleven thousand miles of shore line in the 
archipelago, this proportion seems only natural. 
Nearly all the peaks are volcanic, many quiescent, but 
twelve of them permanently or intermittently active. 
There have been a number of disastrous eruptions within 
the historic period and no doubt many others in pre- 
historic times. So far as known, the effects of these 
outbursts have, however, always been local, and while 
they have caused considerable loss of life and property 
in the districts immediately affected, the islands as a 
whole, and the course of human history on them, seem 
not to have been seriously disturbed by these cataclysms. 
The same may be said of the earthquakes which are 
both frequent and violent in most of the Philippines. 
The city of Manila has several times suffered severely; 
but the natives, before their Christianization, building 
their houses wholly of wood or bamboo and maintaining 
no public works, have never endured more than passing 
inconveniences. The typhoons which visit the northern 
and central islands probably caused much more destruc- 
tion. | 
The Philippines reach from the fifth degree of north 
latitude to the nineteenth. They therefore lie wholly 

