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Troops have perhaps never attempted a campaign in a country more difficult than the interior of Samar. The traditional needle in the haystack would be easy to find compared with an outlaw, or band of outlaws, in such a rugged wilderness.
Consider this matter in a broader sense. Take the order of General Grant to General Sheridan to make the Shenandoah Valley a barren waste; it was absolutely destroyed so the enemy could not again occupy it. I can see no difference between an order to make the Shenandoah Valley a barren waste and Smith's order to make Samar a "howling wilderness."
Luzon, the largest island, is about as large as Pennsylvania, and Mindanao is a bit smaller. Then there are Samar, Panay, Palawan, and Cebú every one large enough to make a State of fair size, and every one with enough people to make a State. There are about seven million people all told, most of whom are of the Malay race.
Some of them may be visited entirely by sea, such as those of Tinagon or Samar; others wholly by land, as the mission of Alangalang. Again, others may be reached partly by sea, partly by land, such as Dulac, Carigara, and Bohol.
The best hemp comes from Sorsogon and Leyte, and some of the Cebu is also very good. Albay, Camarines, Samar, Bisayas, and some other districts, are those from which it principally comes.
It is in lat. 30° N. being distant 110 leagues from Guam and about 60 leagues from Manilla, the chief of the Philippines. Samar is a woody island, and its inhabitants are mostly heathens. Candish spent eleven days in sailing from Guam to this place, having had some foul weather, and scarcely carrying any sail for two or three nights.
The Island and Province of Samar is situated to the southeast of Luzon, it is bounded en the north by the Strait of San Bernardino, on the south by the Jahanetes Canal, separating it from Leyte Island, on the east by the Pacific Ocean, and on the west by the Visayas Sea. It is very mountainous, with high, steep coasts.
There are here, also, deformation centers, but only a few. Among these, with our present knowledge, the Philippines occupy the first place. The knowledge of this, indeed, is not of long duration. Public attention was first aroused about thirty years ago concerning skulls from Samar and Luzon, gathered by F. Jagor from ancient caves, to furnish the proof of their deformation.
They have sometimes carried their audacity so far as to show themselves in the neighborhood of the capital itself, and at others taken up their temporary residence in the district of Mindoro and in places of the jurisdictions of Samar and Leyte; and in short, even dared to form an establishment or general deposit for their plunder in the Island of Buras, where they quietly remained during the years 1797, 1798 and 1799 to the great injury of our commerce and settlements.
I had been little more than a month in Capiz when the rumor went abroad that a parao with forty insurrectos from Samar had landed at Panay, just east of us, and the occupants had scattered themselves out between Panay and Pontevedra. Pontevedra was supposed to be an insurrecto town, thirsting for American gore.
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