Lanterna Rally

Author: Henry Du R. Phelan

Publisher: Forgotten Books

Published: 2018-02-03

Total Pages: 44

ISBN-13: 9780484429030

Excerpt from The Peoples of the Philippine Islands, Vol. 2 I shall now refer to a map of the Archipelago and call attention to the fact that while these islands are for the sake of convenience divided into three groups: Luzon, the Visayas, and Mindanao, they really consist of a single great group of from 1200 to 1400 islands and islets, inhabited by a population of eight to ten million individuals. Without going deeply into the ethnology of the Philippines, I must say a few words about the racial differences of the interesting people with whom we are now occupied, in order that I may more readily be followed in my wanderings over the islands. No two authors of those whom I have consulted, agree as to the classification of the many different Filipino tribes. I have, therefore, adopted the one accepted by the U. S. Government, which recognizes three groups: the Negritos or blacks, the Indonesians and the Malays. Unlike the native races of America, the Filipino tribes have left us no monuments as evidence of an early civilization. Nor do we find in their country mounds such as have been discovered in America, the exploration of which has thrown so much light on the customs of the early inhabitants of this land. And yet, it is known that certain of the tribes of the Philippines possessed a written language previous to the advent of the Spaniards. It is also reported that their legends were preserved in a written form up to that eventful period. From 1521 to the present time, the Philippine people have been closely studied and described by the Spanish Friars who accompanied the discoverers of the Archipelago, and who remained ever since in close contact with the population thereof. Much of our knowledge of the Philippines has thus been acquired from the writings of these early pioneers of civilization. On the other hand, the Spanish who have to such a marked degree the faculty of imposing their religion, language and habits upon a conquered people, to the point even of obliterating race characteristics in them, have by this very faculty, destroyed almost all vestiges of past native history. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.