Geographical Notes

Abstract

AN interesting pamphlet, on the systems of writing used by the various races which inhabited or still inhabit the Philippine Islands, has just been published by Senor Pardo de Tavera under the title “Contribucion para el estudio de los Antiguos I Alfabetos Filipinos.” It is illustrated with plates containing the alphabets discussed, which include those of the Tagals, Visayas or Bisayas, and the Battas. This archipelago offers a comparatively virgin field to students in almost every branch of inquiry. Prof. Blumentritt of Leitmeritz has devoted much study and research to the early history of the Spanish occupation of Luzon, and to the settlements of the Chinese and Japanese there during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, but since the publication of Jagor's work nearly thirty years ago little that is generally known in Europe has been done to solve the various problems which the languages, races, and geography of the islands present. In Spain there exists an important literature, chiefly of the last century, on the subject, and the works of Kray Gaspar, Argensola, Bravo, and others should be a mine for the modern student. The ethnology of the Negritos of the Philippines has been discussed in Germany by Dr. Mundt-Lauf; but of the wild mountain tribes of the interior, and of those who are in a state of chronic war with the Spaniards to the south of Iloilo, hardly anything is known. There is a vague surmise that some of them (the Igorrotes of Luzon, for example) are descendants of Chinese pirates of the latter end of the sixteenth century, who having attacked the Spanish settlements were defeated, and fled to the mountains, where they took themselves wives of the natives and became the progenitors of a new race.