The daily morning journal and courier., 1898-07-11
NEW CHANGES OF FORTUNE
WONDERFUL ESOURCES OF THE
 PHILIPPINE ISLANDS.

Natural Riches for American Enterprise to eVeIop-MineraI Wealth Besides Agricultural Products-Variety of the Animal Lifeline Native Population And the Snakes
 observations in the Philippines in the Sun on May 22, believes that there are great possibilities in the islands.
 T have been wondering" said MT. Sherman, "how the United States will set about to develop the natural re- ,stsssses of the Philippines when the war is ended, and General Merritt and his troops have settled down to a steady occupation of the islands. The Ameri- can people, indeed but few Europeans, realize the unsurpassed resources of the Philippines. To develop the wealth stored there and to teach the natives how best to get the most out of the rich fields, forests and mineral all about them is a problem that will de- mand vast amount of wisdom.
 The natives of the Philippines are different from any race the United States government has ever governed. A dozen tribes that I know about-and there are many more I don't know about-are more intractable than Apaches or Sioux, and they occupy territory abounding in very fertile areas and regions where gold may be mined. If the United States is going to establish a generous, stable govern ment on American lines in the Philip pine possessions, foster the develop ment of the natural resources, and de- rive profit for the home government from the islands, it will call for the very highest administrative talent.
 People do not realize yet how large the Philippine archipelago is There are about eighteen hundred islands in aN. Luzon itself is the size of Illinois and has population of three million. Mindanao has an area of thirty three thousand square miles and a popula- ton of two million. About eight mill lion more people are scattered among the other eighteen hundred odd islands, some of which are only half an acre in area and have only a few families of sayageS living on them. The climatic conditions in the Philippines will be something the United States soldiers have never before experienced. This tropical archipelago reaches within four degrees of the equator on the pI iS i,, tha To I, oe Venezuela. Some two hundred of the islands, varying in area from fifty to six hundred square miles, have never been explored, and contain the fiercest and most barbarous races on this globe. A dozen distinct and different tongues are spoken in the Philippines. Spain has never tried to govern any of the group of islands outside of Luzon, Mindanao, Sulu, Samar and Negros. Oh, Uncle Sam will have an even more serious task in bringing all the Philip pines under the sway of his up-to-d date government than England had in her early conquest and civilization of India
 '"The Chinese in the islands number nearly half million. The true Span- ish, outside of the soldiers and sailors, who come and go every few years, nev- CT number more than three thousand; !; the British are about five hundred strong, and the Americans about one hundred and fifty. The genuine na- tives, the aborigines, are of Malay ori- gin, and have the face, color and man. ners of the Malays The race is very conglomerate. The best natives are handsome, brown, 1.-the and graceful, with hair as black as a ravens wing, and small hands and feet. Then there are what the Spanish call the Negritos. They number three million of the Phil ippine population, and their origin is unknown. They are as wild as Hotten- tots on some remote islands, and have been known to eat human flesh. On Pumolu Island the Negritos have prac- ticed human sacrifice for years. I was there once with several indigo buyers, and we saw the skulls of a score of the natives former townsmen stuck up on the bamboo posts about heather altars as a propitiation to some spirit. The Negritos have woolly heads and black skins. The brown-skinned or Malay aborigines who live in the northern part of the archipelago are known as Itocans, and there are fully fifteen tribes of them, each speaking differ ent dialect. The aborigines in the cen- traI islands of the Philippines are the Tagals. They are by the most intelli- gent and industrious people. Some of them are about as fine people as one wishes to meet-a proud, generous, hos pitable, honest people. The aborigines in the southern part of the archirelago are Visaians, and they are far re- moved from the Tagals in intelligence and worth, but are mild, very dirty and lazy. The natives on Luzon and about the coast of Mindanao are almost who'll ly Tagals Their servants and laborers are the Negritos.
 'sHemp is the greatest article of ex- port in the Philippines, and the official documents in Manila show that in the last decade about forty per cent. of all the hemp grown on the islands has been sent to the United States. one firm in Boston paid an average of three cents a pound in Manila for seventy nine thousand tons of hemp in the ten wears previous to last January. Dur ing the same period the total quantity of hemp exported from the Philippines amounted to exactly 14,100 tons. For a dozen years the importations of hemp into the United States from the Philip