Note 3 — Chapter XII · Otis and the War (Continued)

The total land area of the Philippine archipelago, according to the American Census of 1903, is 115,000 square miles.3 The area of Luzon, the principal island, on which Manila is situated, is 41,000 square miles, and that of Mindanao, the only other large island, is 36,000.4 Between these two large islands, Luzon on the north, and Mindanao on the south, there are a number of smaller ones, but acquaintance with only six of these is essential to a clear understanding of the American occupation. Many Americans, too busy to have paid much attention to the Philippine Islands, which are, and must ever remain, a thing wholly apart from American life, have a vague notion that there are several thousand of them. This is true, in a way. American energy has made, for the first time in their history, an actual count of them, “including everything which at high tide appeared as a separate island.”5 The work was done for our Census of 1903 by Mr. George R. Putnam, now head of the Lighthouse Board of the United States. Mr. Putnam, counted 3141 of them.6 Of these, of course, many—many hundred perhaps—are merely rocks fit only for a resting place for birds. 2775, have an area of less than a square mile each, 262 have an area of between 1 and 10 square miles, 73 between 10 and 100 square miles, and 20 between 100 and 1000 square miles. This accounts for, and may dismiss at once from consideration 3130—all but 11. Most of these 3130 that are large enough to demand even so much as a single word here are poorly adapted to human habitation, being in most instances, without good harbors or other landing places, and usually covered either with dense jungle or inhospitable mountains, or both. Their total area is only about 8500 square miles, of the 115,500 square miles of land in the archipelago. None of them have ever had any political significance, either in Spain’s time, or our own, and therefore, the whole 3130 may at once be eliminated from consideration, leaving 11 only requiring any special notice at all—the 11 largest islands. Of these, Luzon and Mindanao have already been mentioned. The remaining 9, with their respective areas and populations, are: