in parts
unexplored. The Tagals and the Visayas, Christian and more or less
civilized Malay tribes, dominated respectively the first and the second
group. The Mindanao coasts held here and there a few Christian
Filipinos, but the chief denizens of the southern islands were the
fierce Arab-Malay Mohammedans known as Moros, most important and
dangerous of whose tribes were the Illanos.

In all, there were thirty or more races, with an even greater number of
different dialects. Northern Luzon housed the advanced Ilocoans,
Pampangos, Pangasinanes, and Cagayanes, with their hardy bronze heathen
neighbors, the Igorrotes. The Visayas had many degraded aborigines, the
Negritos among them. Over against the Moros in the Mindanao group one
could not ignore the warlike Visayan variation, or the swarming savages
of the interior, hostile alike to Moro and Visaya.

[Illustration: Parade.]
Three Hundred Boys in the Parade of July 4, 1902, Vigan, Ilocos.

The population of the islands numbered 8,000,000 or 10,000,000, 25,000
being Europeans. Half the islanders were Christians, eight or ten per
cent. Mohammedan, perhaps ten per cent. heathen. One considerable
fraction were Chinese, another of mixed extraction. Probably none of the
races were of pure Malay blood, though Malay blood predominated.
Mercantile pursuits were largely in Chinese hands. The Moros disdained
tillage and commerce alike, living on slave labor and captures in war.

Spain had done in the islands much more educational work than the
Americans at first recognized, though none of an advanced kind. Schools
were numerous but not general. Many Filipinos had studied in Europe.
There was a select class possessing information and manners which would
have admitted them to cultivated circles in Paris or London, and
thousands of Filipinos were intellectually the peers of average
middle-class Europeans. The University of St. Thomas graced Manila. Some
seventy colleges and academies at various centres professed to prepare
pupils for it.

Filipinos of aught like cosmopolitan intelligence numbered less than
100,000. Below them were the half-breeds, perhaps 500,000 strong, white,
yellow, or brown, according to the special blend of blood. They were
"intelligent but uneducated, active but not over industrious. They loved
excitement, military display, and the bustle and pomp of government."
Farther down still were the vast toiling masses neither knowing nor
caring much who govern