be dry reading, the history of the Philippine people is a subject of
deep and singular interest.

The Philippine Islands in situation and inhabitants belong to the
Asiatic world, but, for the first three centuries of their recorded
history, they were in a sense a dependency of America, and now the
whirligig of time has restored them in their political relations to
the Western Hemisphere. As a dependency of New Spain they constituted
the extreme western verge of the Spanish dominions and were commonly
known as the Western Islands [2] _(Las Islas del Poniente)._ Their
discovery and conquest rounded out an empire which in geographical
extent far surpassed anything the world had then seen. When the sun
rose in Madrid, it was still early afternoon of the preceding day in
Manila, and Philip II was the first monarch who could boast that the
sun never set upon his dominions. [3]

In one generation, 1486-1522, the two little powers of the Iberian
Peninsula had extended their sway over the seas until they embraced the
globe. The way had been prepared for this unparalleled achievement by
the courage and devotion of the Portuguese Prince Henry the Navigator,
who gave his life to the advancement of geographical discovery and
of Portuguese commerce. The exploration of the west coast of Africa
was the school of the navigators who sailed to the East and the West
Indies, and out of the administration of the trade with Africa grew
the colonial systems of later days.

In the last quarter of the fifteenth century the increasing
obstructions in Egypt and by the Turks to the trade with the East
Indies held out a great prize to the discoverer of an all-sea route
to the Spice Islands. Bartholomew Diaz and Vasco da Gama solved this