Kolambugan, Mindanao 130 View of San Jose Estate sugar mill. San Jose, Mindoro 131 Girls Embroidery, Paco Intermediate School, Manila 136-137 The Council of State in session 160 The Members of the Supreme Court of the Philippine Islands 161 The Gilbert Steel Bridge, Laoag, Ilocos Norte 176 ILLUSTRATED MAPS Map of the Philippine Islands 12 Trade routes of the Philippine Islands 146 Map of the City of Manila 234 "And the earth possesses no scenes more beautiful than those to be found in this verdant and blooming archipelago * * * this magnificent rosary of glowing islands, that Nature has hung above the heaving bosom of the warm Pacific * * * with the vast variety of attractive scenery, mountain and plain, lake and stream, everywhere rich with glossy leafage, clustered growths of bamboo and palm, fields of yellow cane and verdant coffee-groves." "Views of lands and sea and sky, beautiful, gorgeous, awe-inspiring; of historic spots and buildings, monuments, ruins * * * of peoples familiar and strange; of industries modern to the minute, or old, as old as the Pharaohs, the patient work of potter and weaver, of craftsman, artisan, woodman, fisherman, husbandman; of peoples primitive and cultured--races and nations, distinct, assimilated and assimilating foreigners--foreigners whose descendants a few generations later will be Filipinos--the Filipino Nation that is to be, in that wonderland, the Philippines." "Lived ever a man or a people on an island, however insignificant and bleak and bare, without feeling for it pride and love? Call to mind poem and song, picture and tale; the history of island races. "Behold, then, the Philippines: thousands of islands, great and small beautiful, bountiful beneath a benignant sky. Seek to know how Truth paints them, and understand and sympathize with their people's fervid desire to call them their very own." FOREWORD It is vital for the Filipinos that foreigners visiting the Philippines acquire accurate information about the Islands and their people. The Philippines are not generally known abroad, much less are the Filipinos as a people, their degree of civilization and culture, their form of government, their institutions. Hence, the need for a publication such as this setting forth reliable items of information about the islands. This booklet is a compendium of facts, not fancies--facts pertaining to the country known as the Philippines and to the people known as the Filipino people. They are facts that can be verified from authentic sources.