The Philippine Archipelago lies between 4 degrees 45 minutes and 21 degrees north latitude and 118 and 127 degrees east longitude. It consists of nineteen considerable and perhaps fifteen hundred lesser islands, an area nearly equal that of New Jersey, New York, and New England combined. The island of Luzon comprises a third of this, that of Mindanao a fifth or a sixth. The archipelago is rich in natural resources, but mining and manufactures had not at the American occupation been developed. Agriculture was the main occupation, though only a ninth of the land surface was under cultivation. The islands were believed capable of sustaining a population like Japan's 42,000,000. Luzon boasted a glorious and varied landscape and a climate salubrious and inviting, considering the low latitude. Manila hemp, sugar, tobaco, coffee, and indigo were raised and exported in large amounts. [Illustration: Sixteen men seated in a small room.] General Bates. The Sultan. The Jolo Treaty Commission. The islands lay in three groups, the Luzon, the Visaya (Negros, Panay, Cebu, Bohol, Leyte, Samar, and islets), and the Mindanao, including Palawan and the Sulu Islands. Some of these islands were in parts unexplored. The Tagals and the Visayas, Christian and more or less civilized Malay tribes, dominated respectively the first and the second group. The Mindanao coasts held here and there a few Christian Filipinos, but the chief denizens of the southern islands were the fierce Arab-Malay Mohammedans known as Moros, most important and dangerous of whose tribes were the Illanos. In all, there were thirty or more races, with an even greater number of different dialects. Northern Luzon housed the advanced Ilocoans, Pampangos, Pangasinanes, and Cagayanes, with their hardy bronze heathen neighbors, the Igorrotes. The Visayas had many degraded aborigines, the Negritos among them. Over against the Moros in the Mindanao group one could not ignore the warlike Visayan variation, or the swarming savages of the interior, hostile alike to Moro and Visaya. [Illustration: Parade.] Three Hundred Boys in the Parade of July 4, 1902, Vigan, Ilocos. The population of the islands numbered 8,000,000 or 10,000,000, 25,000 being Europeans. Half the islanders were Christians, eight or ten per cent. Mohammedan, perhaps ten per cent. heathen. One considerable fraction were Chinese, another of mixed extraction. Probably none of the races were of pure Malay blood, though Malay blood predominated. Mercantile pursuits were largely in Chinese hands. The Moros disdained tillage and commerce alike, living on slave labor and captures in war.