Page:The Philippine Islands, 1493-1803 (Volume 51).djvu/81

1801-1840] Islands alone, in the hands of an industrious and commercial nation, and with a free and enlightened government, would have become a mighty empire: – they are – a waste!

This archipelago presents, in common with all the islands which form the southern and eastern barrier of Asia, those striking features which mark a recent or an approaching convulsion of nature: they are separated by narrow, but deep, and frequently unfathomable channels; their steep and often tremendous capes and headlands, though clothed with verdure to the very brink, appear to rise almost perpendicularly from the ocean; they have but few reefs or shoals, and those of small extent; and in the interior of the islands, numerous volcanoes, in activity or very recently so, boiling springs and mineral waters of all descriptions, minerals of all kinds on the very surface of the earth, and frequent shocks of earthquakes, all point to this conclusion, and offer a rich and unexplored field to the geologist and mineralogist, as do their plants and animals to the botanist and zoologist; the few attempts that have hitherto been made to examine them, having from various causes failed, or only extended to a short distance round the capital. In the environs of Manila, a monument is erected to the memory of. . .,* a Spanish naturalist of unwearied industry, and it is said, great talents, sent out by government to examine the Phillippine Islands. After seven years' incessant labour, he died of a fever, and at his death his manuscripts, which are all written in cyphers, were taken possession of by the government; they are said yet to remain buried in the archives of 'la Secretaria,' having never been sent to Europe!


 * Apparently referring to Antonio Pineda (, p. 61); but he died only three years after leaving Spain. In the expedition to which he was attached, he was director of the department of natural sciences; he was accompanied by Louis Née, a Frenchman naturalized in Spain. They visited Uruguay, Patagonia, Chile, Peru, and Nueva España; and in Chile were joined by the Hungarian naturalist, Tadeo Haenke (who, reaching Cádiz after their vessel sailed, was obliged to sail to South America to meet them). From Acapulco they went to Marianas and Filipinas; and journeyed (1791) through Luzón from Sorsogón to Manila. Pineda labored diligently in Luzón, and made large collections; but died at Badoc, in Ilocos, in 1792; his brother Arcadio Pineda, who was first lieutenant of the ship, was charged to put in order the materials collected by Antonio, but many of these were lost on the return journey. Returning to South America, at Callao Haenke and Née parted company; the former again traveled in America, but in the vicissitudes of these journeys much of the material collected by him was lost or spoiled. The residue was classified and described, after his death, by the leading botanists of Europe, and this matter was published in a work entitled Reliquiae Haenkeane, seu descriptiones et icones plantarum quae in America meridionali et boreali, in insulis Philippinis et Marianis collegit Thaddeus Haenke, Philosophiae Doctor, Phytographus Regis Hispaniae (Pragae, 1825-35). Née went from Concepción, Chile, overland to Montevideo, and thence to Spain; and in September, 1794, he reached Cádiz, with a herbarium of 10,000 plants, of which 4,000 were new ones. These were preserved in the Botanical Gardens at Madrid, with more than 300 drawings. See Ramón Jordana y Morera's Bosquejo geográfico é historico-natural del archipiélago filipino (Madrid, 1885), pp. 356-358, 361; and José Gogorza y González's Datos para la fauna filipina (Madrid, 1888), p. 2.–