The Encyclopaedia Britannica says that the Island Samai was called Filipina by Vellalohos, who sailed from Mexico in February, 1543.  The capital was fixed at Manila in 1571, a distinction enjoyed three hundred and twenty-seven years.  It was in a letter of Lagozpis in 1567 that the name Ilas Filipinos appeared for the first time.

The Dutch became very enterprising and venturesome in the Asiatic archipelagoes and gave the Philippines much attention, having many fights with the Spaniards.  The Ladrones became well known as a resting place between the islands of Philip and New Spain—­Mexico.  The Chinese Pirates were troublesome, and the Spaniards, between the natives, the pirates and the Dutchmen, kept busy, and had a great deal of naval and military instruction.  There were other varieties of life of an exciting character, in terrible storms and earthquakes.  The storm season is the same in the Philippines as in the West Indies, and the tempests have like features.  October is the cyclone and monsoon month.  The most destructive storm in the island of Luzon of record was October 31st, 1876.  Floods rolled from the mountains, and there was a general destruction of roads and bridges, and it is reported six thousand persons were killed.

So extensive and exposed is the Bay of Manila, it is one hundred and twenty knots in circumference—­that it is not properly a harbor, but a stormy sheet of water.  Admiral Dewey’s fleet has had low steam in the boilers all the while to quickly apply the power of the engines for safety in case of a visitation from the dreaded typhoon, which comes on suddenly as a squall and rages with tornado intensity.

There are many volcanoes in the islands, and they exist from the North of Luzon to the Sulus in the extreme South, a distance as great as from Scotland to Sicily.  There is one on Luzon that bears a close resemblance both in appearance and phenomena to Vesuvius.  The likeness in eruptions is startling.  The city of Manila has repeatedly suffered from destroying shocks, and slight agitations are frequent.  Within historic times a mountain in Luzon collapsed, and a river was filled up while the earth played fountains of sand.  The great volcano Taal, 45 miles south of Manila, is only 850 feet high, and on a small island in a lake believed to be a volcanic abyss, having an area of 100 square miles.  Monte Cagua, 2,910 feet high, discharges smoke continually.  In 1814 12,000 persons lost their lives on Luzon, the earth being disordered and rent in an appalling way.  There were awful eruptions July 20 and October 24, 1867, forests of great trees buried in discharges of volcanoes.  June 3, 1863, at 31 minutes after 7 in the evening, after a day of excessive heat, there was a shock at Manila lasting 30 seconds, in which 400 people were killed, 2,000 wounded, and 26 public and 570 private houses seriously damaged.  The greater structures made heaps of fragments.  That these calamities have taught the people lessons in building is apparent