Part 77 (1/2)
And walks on gold and silver, and knows her power increased, Nor fears the tyrant longer--'Our Lady of the East.'”--_Stoddard_.
The most important, and by far the most interesting, as well as the least known of America's new possessions, gained by her war with Spain, are the Philippine Islands. Comparatively few Americans have ever set foot upon that far-away and semi-civilized land, the possession of which enables America to say with England, ”The sun never sets upon our flag.”
[Ill.u.s.tration: FILIPINOS OF THE SAVAGE TRIBES.]
The Philippines lie almost exactly on the other side of the globe from us. Approximately speaking, our noonday is their midnight; our sunset is their sunrise. There are some 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 lat.i.tude, 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.
[Ill.u.s.tration: NATIVE HUNTERS, PHILIPPINE ISLANDS.]
THE STORY OF DISCOVERY.
[Ill.u.s.tration: THE ESCOLTA, LOOKING SOUTH.
This is the Broadway of Manila. Along this famous street the princ.i.p.al retail shops of the city are situated. Chinese and half-castes are the princ.i.p.al 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 pa.s.sage 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 pa.s.sed 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 pa.s.sed through the Straight of Magellan he had remaining but three of his original five s.h.i.+ps, and they were the first European vessels that ever breasted the waves of the mighty western ocean. Once upon the unknown but placid sea--which he named the Pacific--the bold navigator steered straight to the northwest. Five months later, about March 1st, he discovered the Ladrone Islands--which name Magellan gave to the group on account of the thieving propensities of the natives--the word _Ladrone_ meaning robber.
[Ill.u.s.tration: THE BEAUTIFUL LUNETA, MANILA's FAs.h.i.+ONABLE PROMENADE AND DRIVE.
This most celebrated drive and promenade in the city of Manila is by the old sea wall. The Governor and Archbishop, with their escorts and striking equipages, came every afternoon to air themselves, and in the cool of every summer evening, when the fine military band of the Spanish army used to play. The whole population apparently came out to listen.
This was also the place of all great processions, executions, etc.]
After a short stay at the islands, he steered southwest, landing on the north coast of Mindanao, the second largest island of the Philippines.
The natives were friendly and offered to pilot Magellan to the island of Cebu, which lay to the north, and which they reported to be very rich.
After taking possession of Mindanao in the name of his king, the discoverer proceeded to Cebu, where he made such demonstrations and gave such descriptions of the glory and power of Spain that he easily formed a treaty with the king of the island, who swore allegiance to his new-found master and had himself and chief advisers baptized in the Catholic faith. Magellan then joined the king in his war against some of the neighboring powers, and on April 25, 1521, was killed in a skirmish.
The spot where he fell is now marked by a monument.
FIRST CIRc.u.mNAVIGATION OF THE GLOBE.
Trouble soon arose between Magellan's sailors and their new-found allies. The Spaniards were invited to a banquet, and twenty-seven of them were treacherously slain. The remainder, fearing for their lives, escaped in their s.h.i.+ps and sailed for home. It was soon discovered that they had too few men to manage the three vessels, and one of them was destroyed. The other two proceeded on their voyage and discovered the spice island of Tidor, where they loaded with spices; but a few days later one of the vessels sprang a leak and went down with her freight and crew. The other, after many hards.h.i.+ps, reached Spain, thus completing the first circ.u.mnavigation of the globe.
SECOND EXPEDITION TO THE PHILIPPINES.
In 1555, Philip II. came to the Spanish throne and determined to send another expedition to the East Indies. His religious zeal inspired him to conquer and christianize the islands. To shorten the long and dangerous voyage, he decided to prepare and start with five s.h.i.+ps from the coast of Mexico. Miguel Lopez de Legaspi led the expedition, consisting of four hundred soldiers and sailors and six Augustine monks.
In due time the expedition landed at Cebu. The formidable appearance of the s.h.i.+ps awed the natives, and on April 27, 1565--forty years after Magellan's remnant had fled from the island--Legaspi landed and took possession. In honor of the Spanish king the archipelago was given the name of the Philippine Islands.
In 1570 Legaspi sent his grandson, Salcedo, to subdue the island of Luzon, the northernmost and the largest of the Philippine group. He landed near the present site of Manila. The trustful natives readily agreed to accept the Spanish king as their master, and to pay tribute.
Such slight tribal resistances as were offered were quickly subdued. The next year Legaspi went to Manila to visit his grandson; and, seeing the importance of the situation and its fine harbor, declared that city the capital of the whole archipelago and the king of Spain the sovereign of all the islands. Accordingly, he moved his headquarters to that point, built houses and fortifications, and within a year had the city well organized, when he died, leaving Salcedo as his successor in command. It is remarkable how much these two men accomplished with so small a force; but they did it not so much by arms as by cajoling and deceiving the simple natives. Furthermore, they allowed the conquered people to be governed by their own chiefs in their own way, so long as they paid a liberal tribute to the Spanish crown.
STRUGGLES FOE SUPREMACY.
The history of the Philippines has been monotonous from their discovery until the present, a monotony broken at times by periods of adventures in which Manila has generally been the central scene. About 1580, Lima-hong, a Chinese pirate, took the city with an armed fleet of sixty-two vessels, bearing 4,000 men and 1,500 women. They met with stubborn resistance, but succeeded in scaling the walls and entering the city. The Spanish forces were driven into a fort, which the Chinese stormed. A b.l.o.o.d.y hand-to-hand conflict followed, and the Chinese were finally repulsed.