Note 49 — Part III. (continued 2)

The Philippine Islands are an archipelago of about 1400 islands, forming a dependency of Spain, lying between 4 deg. 40 min and 20 deg. N. lat., and 116 deg. 40 min. and 126 deg. 30 min. E. lon., and having the China Sea on the west, and the Pacific Ocean on the East. They are very imperfectly known at present, but are estimated to have a total area of 114,000 square miles, and a population of about 10,000,000. The principal islands of the many hundreds of large and small forming the group are—Luzon, Mindanao, Palawan, Mindoro, Panay, Negros, Zebu, Leyte, and Samar. The Philippines were discovered by Fernando Magalhaens in 1521, in the reign of Philip II, after whom they were named; and in 1564 the Spaniards made a settlement on one of the islands, and founded Manila in 1571. They obtained the possession of this important group almost without bloodshed; and they have preserved it by the extensive diffusion of the Roman Catholic religion among the Malays, who form the greater part of the population. The Spaniards have retained the island ever since, except from 1762 to 1764, during which the English held Manila, and for the release of which the Spaniards paid a ransom of £1,000,000.