Excerpt from America and the Philippines In View of these conditions, it is not remarkable that until very recently geographers have contented themselves with enumerating the islands as about twelve hundred, an estimate made several centuries ago. This was the estimate generally accepted when the Treaty of Paris was signed between Spain and the United States, for no one had ever taken the trouble to count them. Soon thereafter accurate surveys were undertaken, with the result that the number of known islands and islets was brought up to and it is believed that there are others not on any chart. Of this number only half are of enough im portance to be named, and of those bearing names less than one fourth are populated. More than 90 per cent. Of the total land area is contained in the eleven largest islands. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.