FORESTS AND TIMBER.

The forest products of the islands are perhaps of greater value than their mineral resources. Timber not only exists in almost exhaustless quantity, but—considering the whole group, which extends nearly a thousand miles from north to south—in unprecedented diversity, embracing sixty varieties of the most valuable woods, several of which are so hard that they cannot be cut with ordinary saws, some so heavy that they sink in water, and two or three so durable as to afford ground for the claim that they outlast iron and steel when placed in the ground or under water. Several of these woods are unknown elsewhere, and, altogether, they are admirably suited for various decorative purposes and for the manufacture of fine implements and furniture.

Here also are pepper, cinnamon, wax, and gums of various sorts, cloves, tea, and vanilla, while all tropical fruits, such as cocoanuts, bananas, lemons, limes, oranges of several varieties, pineapples, citrons, bread-fruits, custard apples, pawpaws, and mangroves nourish, and most of them grow wild, though, of course, they are not equal to the cultivated fruit. There are fifty-odd varieties of the banana in the archipelago, from the midget, which makes but a single mouthful, to the huge fruit eighteen inches long. There seems to be no limit to which tropical fruits and farm products can be cultivated.

The animal and bird life of the Philippines offer a field of interesting research to naturalists. There are no important carnivorous animals. A small wild-cat and two species of civet-cats constitute about all that belong to that class. The house-cats of the Philippines have curious fish-hook crooks in the ends of their tails. There are several species of deer in the archipelago. Hogs run wild in large numbers. The large water buffalo (carabao) has been domesticated and is the chief beast of burden with the natives. The timarau is another small species of buffalo, very wild and entirely untamable; and, though numerous in certain places, is hard to find, and when brought to bay dies fighting.

Birds abound in all of the islands; nearly six hundred species have been found, over fifty of which exist nowhere else in the world. One of these species builds a nest which is highly prized by Chinese epicures as an article of diet. Prof. Worcester tells us "the best quality of them sometimes bring more than their weight in gold." Crocodiles are numerous in fresh-water lakes and streams, attaining enormous size, and in certain places causing much loss of life among stock and men as well. Snakes also abound, and some of them are very venomous. Cobras are found in the southern islands. Pythons are numerous, some of the smaller sizes being sold in the towns and kept in houses to catch rats, at which they are said to be more expert than house-cats.

All the domestic animals, aside from the carabao, have been introduced from abroad. Cattle are extensively raised, and in some of the islands run wild. The horses are a small Spanish breed, but are very strong and have great endurance. Large European horses do not stand the climate well.

CLIMATE, VOLCANOES, ETC.

The mean annual temperature of Manila is 80° F. The thermometer seldom rises above 100° or falls below 60° anywhere in the archipelago. There is no month in the year during which it does not rise as high as 91°. January and December are the coldest months, the average temperature being 70° to 73°. May is the warmest, the average being 84°. April is the next warmest, with an average of 83°; but the weather is generally very moist and humid, which makes the heat more trying. The three winter months have cool nights. Malaria is prevalent, but contagious diseases are comparatively few. Yellow fever and cholera are seldom heard of.

The Philippines are the home of many volcanoes, a number of them still active. Mayon, in the island of Luzon, is one of the most remarkable volcanic mountains on the globe. It is a perfect cone, rising to the height of 8,900 feet, and is in constant activity; its latest destructive eruption took place in 1888. Apo, in the island of Mindanao, 10,312 feet high, is the largest of the Philippine volcanoes. Next is Canloon in Negros, which rises 8,192 feet above the sea. Taal is in a lake, with a height of 900 feet, and is noteworthy as being the lowest volcano in the world. To those not accustomed to volcanoes, these great fire-spouting mountains, which are but prominent representatives of many lesser ones in the islands, seem to be an ever-present danger to the inhabitants; but the natives and those who live there manifest little or no fear of them. In fact, they rather pride themselves in their possession of such terrifying neighbors.

Such is an outline view of the Philippine Archipelago of the present day. A new era has opened up in the history of that wonderful land with its liberation from the Spanish yoke. The dense ignorance and semi-savage barbarities which exist there must not be expected to yield too rapidly to the touch of human kindness and brotherly love with which the Christian world will now visit those semi-civilized and untamed children of nature. Nevertheless, western civilization and western progress will undoubtedly work mighty changes in the lives of those people, in the development of that country, during the first quarter of the twentieth century, which ushers in the dawn of its freedom.

THE BATTLE OF MANILA.

In all the annals of naval warfare there is no engagement, terminating in so signal a victory with so little damage to the victors, as that which made the name of George Dewey immortal on the memorable Sunday morning of May 1, 1898, in Manila Bay. The world knows the story of that battle, for it has been told hundreds of times in the thousands of newspapers and magazines and scores of books throughout the civilized world. But few, perhaps, who peruse these pages have read the simple details of the fight as narrated by that most modest of men, Admiral Dewey himself. We cannot better close this chapter on the Philippines than by inserting Admiral Dewey's official report of the battle which wrested the Filipinos from Spanish tyranny and placed nearly ten millions of oppressed people under the protecting care of the United States.

ADMIRAL DEWEY'S STORY OF MANILA.

OUR NEW POSSESSIONS (CONTINUED).

THE LADRONE, OR MARIANA ISLANDS.

It was a welcome sight to Magellan and his crew when, one day in March, nearly 400 years ago, they beheld the verdant and beautifully sloping hills of the Ladrone Islands. Eighteen weary months before they had sailed from the coast of Spain, and all that time, first to the southwest and then to the northwest, they had followed the setting sun. Theirs were the first vessels manned by white men that had ever plowed the trackless Pacific; and this was the first land ever seen by white men within that unknown ocean.

It was a pitiable crew on those three small, weather-beaten ships, who drew, that March morning, toward the coast of the present island of Guam, which is now a possession of the United States. Hunger and thirst had driven them to the verge of madness. They had eaten even the leather thongs from their sail fastenings, and only a small mug of water per day was the portion of drink for a man. "Land! Land!!" It was a glad cry from the watch aloft. There were palm trees, cocoanuts, green grass, tropical fruits, an abundance of fresh water, and—though naked—a curious and friendly people. No wonder Magellan paused to rest himself and his sailors.

Those little islands have never been of much value, and never can be. Seventeen of them stretching in a row about six hundred miles from north to south, and their total area, including their islets and reefs, is variously estimated at from 400 to 560 square miles. Hence, there is but about one-fourth more territory on the whole seventeen islands combined than is included within the corporate limits of the city of Greater New York.

A broad channel divides the Ladrones into two groups. The northern group consists of ten islets, without inhabitants; the southern group has seven islands, four of which are inhabited. The largest island, Guahan, known to us as Guam, ceded to us by Spain, was taken by our warship Charleston on July 4, 1898. This island contains the only town in the colony. Its full Spanish name is San Ignacio de Agaña. It is the capital of the archipelago, and contains more than half of the whole population.

THE NATIVE INHABITANTS.

When first visited by Europeans, the archipelago contained from 40,000 to 60,000 souls, represented by two distinct classes, the nobles and the people, between whom marriage, and even contact, were forbidden. But the Spanish conquest soon ended this distinction by reducing all alike to servitude. For a long time after Spanish occupation, the natives complained and finally rebelled against the oppressive measures of their rulers; but by the end of the seventeenth century they ceased their resistance, and it was found by a census that fully half of them had perished or escaped in their canoes to the Caroline Islands, and that two-thirds of their one hundred and eighty villages had fallen to ruins. Then came an epidemic which swept away nearly all the natives of Guam; and the island of Tinian (one of the group) was depopulated and its inhabitants brought to Guam.

Nearly all the new arrivals soon died. In the year 1760, a census showed a total of only 1,654 inhabitants left in all the islands, and the Spaniards repopulated them by bringing Tagals from the Philippines. These, mixed with the remaining natives and Spaniards, have steadily increased. The population of the islands in 1899 was estimated at about 9,000. The people are generally lacking in energy, loose in morals, and miserably poor. Their education has been seriously neglected. Their religion is Catholic, no Protestant missions having been encouraged—we might say, not allowed—there or in the Philippines or the Carolines.

TOPOGRAPHY, CLIMATE, ETC.

The islands of the northern group are mountainous, the altitudes reaching from 2,600 to 2,700 feet. There are evidences of volcanoes all over the archipelago, and some mountains contain small craters and cones not yet extinct. The climate of the Ladrones, though humid, is salubrious, and the heat, being tempered by the trade winds, is milder than in the Philippines. The yearly average temperature of Guam is 81°. Streams are everywhere copious—though the clearing of the land has diminished their size of late years. The original flora consists generally of Asiatic plants, but much has been introduced from the Philippines and other sources.

Cocoanuts, palms, the bread tree, and tropical trees and plants generally, thrive. The large fruit bat which abounds in the Philippines is indigenous to the Ladrones, and, despite its objectionable odor, is a principal article of food. Swine and oxen are allowed to run wild, and are hunted when needed. There are only a few species of birds; even insects are rare; and the reptiles are represented by several kinds of lizards and a single species of serpent. No domestic animals were known in the islands until introduced by the Spaniards.

When the United States steamship Charleston opened fire on the little city of Agaña, July 4, 1898, the people had not heard of the war, and the governor said he thought "the noble Americans were saluting" him, and was "deeply humiliated because he had no powder to return their salute." It was an easy, bloodless victory. The governor and his soldiers were carried to Manila as prisoners, and an American garrison of a few men left to take charge of this new American territory in the Pacific.

CONCLUSION.

Thus at the close of the nineteenth century, the Greater United States assumes its appointed place among the foremost nations of the world, and stands on the threshold of achievements whose grandeur no man dare attempt to prophesy. We pause, awed, grateful, and profoundly impressed, when we recall the mighty events, the amazing progress, and the wonderful advancements in discovery, science, art, literature, and all that tends to the good of mankind that are certain to give the twentieth century a pre-eminence above all the years that have gone before.

The new era of our country has opened. The United States enters on the first stage of the transformation from an isolated commonwealth into an outreaching power with dependencies in both hemispheres. We can no longer hold an attitude of aloofness from the rest of the world. With vulnerable points in our outlying possessions, we must make ready to defend them not only by force of arms but by diplomatic skill. Entangling alliances as heretofore will be avoided, and the conditions, complications, and policies of foreign powers must in the future possess a practical importance for us.

The original thirteen States have expanded into forty-five, embracing the vast area between the two oceans and extending from the British possessions to the Gulf of Mexico. To them has now been added our colonial territory, so vast in extent that, like the British Empire, the sun never sets on our dominions. Where a hundred years ago were only a few scattered villages and towns, imperial cities now raise their heads. Thousands of square miles of forest and solitude have given place to cultivated farms, to factories, and workshops that hum with the wheels of industry. The Patent Office issues 40,000 patents each year. We have three cities with more than a million population apiece, and twenty-five with a population ranging from a hundred thousand to half a million. Greater New York is the second city in the world, and, if its present rate of growth continues, it will surpass London before the middle of the coming century. Our population has grown from 3,000,000 at the close of the Revolution to 75,000,000. When Andrew Jackson became President there was not a mile of railroad in the United States. To-day our mileage exceeds that of all the countries of Europe, Asia, and Africa combined, and the employes, connected directly or indirectly with railroads in the United States, number almost a million persons. The half-dozen crude newspapers of the Revolution have expanded into more than 20,000, whose daily news is gathered from every quarter of the globe. The total yearly issue is more than three billions.

No country can approach the advancements we have made in invention, in discovery, in science, in art, in education and in all the civilizing agencies of mankind. Volumes would be required to name our achievements in these lines. Our material property has been or is equally wonderful. When the Civil War closed, our public debt was nearly $3,000,000,000. On December 1, 1898, it was $1,036,000,000. Most of the leading nations have great debts, but the United States is the only one which is steadily decreasing its debt and at the same time enormously increasing its resources. The debt of Great Britain is now about $87 per capita, that of France $115, of Holland $100, of Italy $75, and of the United States less than $15, with the security increasing all the time.

Let the thoughtful reader note these striking facts. European nations generally, and some South American nations also, have been compelled to resort to various methods of taxation to supply the sums needed for ordinary governmental expenses, to meet the interest on the existing debt, to provide resources for new expenditures, buildings, armament, subsidies, and various public works. England has an income tax and many stamp taxes, a house tax, and collects some 20 per cent. of its revenue from direct taxation. France has a tobacco monopoly, registration taxes, stamp taxes, tax on windows, and innumerable local taxes, one being the octroi, or tax on goods entering cities. In addition to an income tax, and many stamp taxes, Austria derives a good deal of its public revenue from lotteries. Italy goes still further with her tobacco monopoly, house tax, income tax, salt tax, octroi duties, stamp taxes, and heavy legacy and registration taxes. In the United States, however, the public revenues have been provided for and all public expenses met, and the national debt reduced beside, without recourse to any direct taxation. We have no government monopolies, and the Treasury maintains a healthful condition from the receipts of customs and internal revenue payments.

Thus with the spirit of fraternity between all sections of the Union stronger than ever before, with the spirit of patriotism more deeply imbedded and all-pervading, with our moral, educational, and material prosperity and progress greater than any time in our past history, and never equaled by any nation, since the annals of mankind began—we face the future, bravely resolved to meet all requirements, responsibilities, and duties as become men whose motto is

IN GOD IS OUR TRUST.

The End.