1,200 of these islands, 400 of which are
inhabited or capable of supporting a population; they cover about
125,000 square miles; they lie in the tropical seas, generally speaking,
from five to eighteen degrees north latitude, and are bounded by the
China Sea on the west and the Pacific Ocean on the east; they are about
7,000 miles southwest from San Francisco, a little over 600 southeast
from Hong Kong, China, and about 1,000 almost due north from Australia;
they contain between 5,000,000 and 8,000,000 inhabitants, about
one-third of whom had prior to Dewey's victory, May 1, 1898,
acknowledged Spanish sovereignty to the extent of paying regular tribute
to the Spanish crown; the remainder are bound together in tribes under
independent native princes or Mohammedan rulers. Perhaps 2,500,000 all
told have become nominal Catholics in religion. The rest are Mohammedans
and idolaters. There are no Protestant churches in the islands.

[Illustration: NATIVE HUNTERS, PHILIPPINE ISLANDS.]

THE STORY OF DISCOVERY.

[Illustration: THE ESCOLTA, LOOKING SOUTH.

This is the Broadway of Manila. Along this famous street the principal
retail shops of the city are situated. Chinese and half-castes are the
principal retail merchants. At the time of the capture of the city by
Admiral Dewey and General Merritt there were not over one dozen European
merchants in Manila. Not one American firm was there; the last one, a
Boston hemp dealer, having been driven out some years before.]

It was twenty-nine years after Columbus discovered America that Magellan
saw the Philippines, the largest archipelago in the world, in 1521. The
voyage of Magellan was much longer and scarcely less heroic than that of
the discoverer of America. Having been provided with a fleet by the
Spanish king with which to search for spice islands, but secretly
determined to sail round the world, he set out with five vessels on
August 10, 1519, crossed the Atlantic to America, and skirted the
eastern coast southward in the hope of finding some western passage into
the Pacific, which, a few years previous, had been discovered by Balboa.
It was a year and two months to a day from the time he left Spain until
he reached the southern point of the mainland of South America and
passed through the straight which has since borne his name. On the way,
one of his vessels deserted; another was wrecked in a storm. When he
passed through the Straight of Magellan he had remaining but th