The political or governmental problem being now reduced from 3141 islands to eleven, the last three of the nine contained in the above table may also be eliminated as follows: (See map at end of volume.) Paragua, the long narrow island seen at the extreme lower left of any map of the archipelago, extending northeast southwest at an angle of about 45 deg., is practically worthless, being fit for nothing much except a penal colony, for which purpose it is in fact now used. Masbate--easily located on the map at a glance, because the twelfth parallel of north latitude intersects the 124th meridian of longitude east of Greenwich in its southeast corner--though noted for cattle and other quadrupeds, is not essential to a clear understanding of the human problem in its broader governmental aspects. Mindoro, the large island just south of the main bulk of Luzon, pierced by the 121st meridian of longitude east of Greenwich, is thick with densely wooded mountains and jungle over a large part of its area, has a reputation of being very unhealthy (malarious), is also very sparsely settled, and does not now, nor has it ever, cut any figure politically, as a disturbing factor. [244] Eliminating Paragua, Masbate, and Mindoro as not essential to a substantially correct general idea of the strategic and governmental problems presented by the Philippine Islands, we have left, besides Luzon and Mindanao, nothing but the half-dozen islands which appear in large type in the above table: Panay, Negros, Cebu, Bohol, Samar, Leyte, with a total area of 20,500 square miles. Add these to Luzon's 41,000 square miles and Mindanao's 36,000, and you have the Philippine archipelago as we are to consider it in this book, that is to say, two big islands with a half dozen little ones in between, the eight having a total area of 97,500 square miles, of which the two big islands represent nearly four-fifths. While the great Mohammedan island of Mindanao, near Borneo, with its 36,000 square miles [245] of area, requires that the Philippine archipelago be described as stretching over more than 1000 miles from north to south, still, inasmuch as Mindanao only contains about 500,000 people all told, [246] half of them semi-civilized, [247] the governmental problem it presents has no more to do with the main problem of whether, if ever, we are to grant independence to the 7,000,000 Christians of the other islands, than the questions that have to be passed on by our Commissioner of Indian Affairs have to do with the tariff.