Some liberty has been taken in correcting the spelling of geographical and other proper names in order to render the history uniform in its orthography and to avoid confusion and misconnection of events, persons, and places. The same system of orthography has been used here as that used and described in Part 1 of Volume IV, Ethnological Survey Publications. Diacritical signs to denote the long sounds of vowels have, however, been very rarely used. The Arabic "hamzat," occurring in Moro words has been expressed by an apostrophe; while an inverted apostrophe has been used to represent the Arabic sound or character "`ain," the eighteenth letter of the Arabic alphabet. Annotations which occur in the original documents have generally been indicated by letters, while those made by the author are denoted by figures. Manila, January, 1907. CHAPTER I GEOGRAPHICAL DESCRIPTION OF THE SULU ARCHIPELAGO [2] IN GENERAL The Sulu Archipelago is a series of small volcanic islands which extends in a northeast and southwest direction between the meridians of 119° 10' and 122° 25' east, and the parallels of 4° 30' and 6° 50' north. It forms a continuous chain of islands, islets, and coral reefs, which connects the peninsula of Zamboanga with the northeastern extremity of Borneo and separates the Sulu Sea from the Celebes Sea. It marks the southern line of communication between the Philippine Islands and Borneo and is probably the chief route of former emigrations and travel from Borneo to Mindanao and the southern Bisayan Islands. The islands of the Archipelago are so disposed as to form several smaller groups, the most important of which are the following: The Basilan Group, the Balangingi or Samal Group, the Sulu Group, the Pangutaran Group, the Tapul or Siasi Group, and the Tawi-tawi Group. The Basilan Group is the first on the north and includes the Island of Basilan and fifty-six small adjacent islands, all of which lie north of the parallel of 6° 15' north and east of the meridian of 121° 19' east. This group, under the name of Basilan, constituted the sixth district of the politico-military government of Mindanao, organized by the Spanish Government in 1861. Since that date the islands forming this group have not been recognized politically as a part of the Sulu Archipelago.