Page:American Historical Review, Volume 12.djvu/923

 Blair and Robertson : The Pliilippine Islands 9 1 3 The narration of Dampier, concluded in volume XXXIX., falls prop- erly under this last head. Dampier is not very reliable as to Philippine geography, but his accounts of the Magindanaos and of the inhabitants of the Batanes Islands, among both of which peoples he and his companions stopped for some time, are interesting throughout, and contain points of value for ethnologist and historian. The fifty-page appendix on " Moro Pirate Raids " in volume XLI. is excellent for its abstracts and its condensed bibliographical information. In this con- nection, the map {circa 1700) of Magendanao (Mindanao) by Faky- nolano, elder brother of the Sultan, reproduced from the original in the British Museum, deserves notice. The selections from Friar Combes (1667) in volume XL. deal with the natives of the southern islands, and especially with the Moros. Combes's work is valuable as a history of Spanish operations in the Moro territory, but he is an untrustworthy guide as to the customs of the people, lacking totally the spirit or inter- est of the scientific observer. The annotations here drawn from Blumen- tritt and Retana (both of them strangers to Mindanao and the ]Ioros) and from Father Pastells are never of much value and are often un- reliable. The nineteenth-century letters from Jesuit missionaries in Mindanao, printed in volume XLIIL, are of interest but of scant scien- tific value. This volume's appendix contains 65 pages reprinted from the Narrative of Lieutenant Wilkes, commander of the United States Exploring Expedition of 1838-1842, this extract dealing especially with Sulu and the first official relations of the United States with that archi- pelago. In a foot-note on page 187 is reproduced the English text of Lieutenant Wilkes's treaty with the Sultan of Sulu regarding the treatment to be accorded to ships and traders from the United States. The " ethnological appendices " which occupy nearly all of volumes XL. and XLIIL deal mainly, however, with the Filipinos of the Chris- tianized provinces. Of the authorities here translated or abstracted, the Jesuit Colin (1663) easily leads. It must be remembered, however, that he wrote a century after the conquest, and moreover he rarely indi- cates to the reader whether he is testifying as to primitive Filipino civilization, customs, etc., from his own observations or from the writ- ings of earlier chroniclers. The extracts from Friar San Antonio (1738) are valueless on this score, being a mere jumble of data drawn from Plasencia, Colin, Combes and others. Likewise the review of the peoples of the Philippines by Friar Zuiiiga (1803) is remarkable chiefly for being fantastic. It is interesting to compare (volume XLIIL) the similarity of the Filipino superstitions described by Friar Ortiz (1731) with those shown to be still persisting, even in central Luzon, by a Filipino writer of 1905. Friar San Augustin's famous letter (1720) on Filipino characteristics is well presented, with both sides of the subject brought out in comments and selections from the Jesuits, Murillo Velarde and Delgado, and others, in volume XL. The friar-chronicles here translated and abstracted are: Recollect