The thirsty soil of Mindanao has drunk freely of Spanish blood, and Pampango, Tagal, and Visaya have all worthily borne their part in this long drawn-out crusade of the Cross against the Crescent. But not alone the Moro sword and spear has delayed for so long the conquest of Mindanao. Deadly fevers lurk in the lowlands, the swamps and the creeks of that rich and fertile island. The Moros appear impervious to the malaria. At all events they live and thrive in, or in close proximity to, mangrove swamp and flooded jungle. The Tagal or the Visaya is not immune, and some even resist an attack of the terrible perniciosa less than a white man. I shall never in my life forget the awful sights I witnessed in 1887 and 1892 when some native regiments returned to Manila from the war in Mindanao. Any one who saw Shafter's army disembark on their return from Cuba will understand me. Those who could march were mere walking corpses, but the shrunken forms, the livid tint and the glassy eyes of those who could not stand (and there were hundreds of them), brought the horrors of mismanaged war to the onlooker like one of Vereschagin's realistic masterpieces. But as the slaughter of the Dervishes at Omdurman teaches, not even the most dauntless bravery can prevail against modern weapons in the hands of tolerably disciplined troops. The quick-firing gun, the howitzer with shrapnell shell, the machine-gun and the magazine-rifle must inevitably bring about the subjugation of every lowland population not supplied with these dread engines of civilisation, and only the hardy dwellers in Nature's loftiest fastnesses, the Himalayas or the Andes, may hope to retain their independence in the future. It is a striking instance of the irony of fate that, just as modern weapons have turned the scale in favour of the Spaniards in this long struggle, and brought the Moros within measurable distance of subjection, when only one more blow required to be struck, Spain's Oriental Empire should suddenly vanish in the smoke of Dewey's guns, and her flag disappear for ever from battlements where (except for the short interval of British occupation, 1762-3) it has proudly waved through storm and sunshine for three hundred and twenty-eight years. Such, however, is the case, and it now falls to the United States to complete the task of centuries, to stretch out a protecting hand over the Christian natives of Mindanao, and to suppress the last remains of a slave-raiding system, as ruthless, as sanguinary and as devastating as the annals of the world can show. The Moros of Mindanao are divided into five groups or tribes; Illanos, Sanguiles, Lutangas, Calibuganes, and Yacanes. (18) The Moros Illanos, who are the most important and the most dangerous community, are described fully later on. They inhabit the country between the Bay of Iligan and Illana Bay, also round Lake Lanao, the Rio Grande and Lake Liguan.