“ MANILA, July 2.—This Island of Luzon is so large, the country is so hilly, and at this rainy season of the year the roads are so very bad that, in spite of the fact that communication is carried on with remarkable rapidity, considering the primitive methods employed, news really travels slowly and frequently gets mired in the deep muds or extinguished by the tropical downpour long before its destination is reached. ”

“ The insurgents and their steamer went cruising about, and wherever they could wreak vengeance on the Spaniards they proceeded to do so with a fierceness and cruelty reminding one forcibly of what our Indians used to do when on the warpath. The full weight of their wrath fell upon the inhabitants of the Spanish town of Santo Domingo, on the Island of Batan, one of a group of small islands between Luzon and Formosa. They landed their full force, and put every man they could find to the sword or shot him with their revolvers. ”

“ At the northern part of the island proper is grown the very best tobacco used in the cigar factories of Manila, while on the outlying islands is found the finest grazing lands in the Philippines. Cattle raised here are noted for the greater weight and finer flavor of the meat than can be found elsewhere in these latitudes. Consequently the prices commanded in the Manila markets, where everything is centred, are far and away above what are reached by the products of other sections. Attempts were often made to improve nature's landscape gardening ”