s archipelago of the Philippines, where races, manners, and
traditions are so often in collision, the religious fanaticism of the
Spaniards has, more than once, come into conflict with a fanaticism fully
as fierce as that of the Mussulman. At a distance of six thousand leagues
from Toledo and Granada, the same ancient hatreds have brought European
Spaniards and Asiatic Saracens into the same relentless antagonism that
swayed them in the days of the Cid and Ferdinand the Catholic. The island
of Sulu, on account of its position between Mindanao and Borneo, was the
commercial, political, and religious centre of the followers of the
Prophet, the Mecca of the extreme Orient. From this centre they spread
over the neighbouring archipelago. Dreaded as merciless pirates and
unflinching fanatics, they scattered everywhere terror, ruin, and death,
sailing in their light proas up the narrow channels and animated with
implacable hatred for those conquering invaders, to whom they never gave
quarter and from whom they never expected it; constantly beaten in pitched
battle, they as constantly took again to the sea, eluding pursuit of the
heavy Spanish vessels, taking refuge in bays and creeks where no one could
follow them, pillaging isolated ships, surprising the villages, massacring
the old men, leading away the women and the adults into slavery, pushing
the audacious prows of their skiffs even up to within three hundred miles
of Manila, and seizing every year nearly four thousand captives.

Between the Malay creese and the Castilian carronade the struggle was
unequal, but it did not last the less long on that account, nor, obscure
though it was, was it the less bloody. On both sides there was the same
bravery, the same cruelty. It required all the tenacity of Spain to purge
these seas of the pirates who infested them, and it was not until after a
conflict of several years, in 1876, that the Spanish squadron was able to
bring its broadside to bear on Tianggi, that nest of the Suluan pirates,
land a division of troops, invest all the outlets, and burn up the town
and its inhabitants as well as its harbour and all the craft within it.
The soldiers planted their flag and the engineers built a new city on the
smoking ruins. This city is protected by a strong garrison. For a time, at
least, it was all over with piracy, but not with Moslem fanaticism, which
was exasperated rather than crushed by its defeat. To the rovers of the
seas succeede