It took me over a month and a half to reach the summer islands that I sought. In three weeks I had gone through the Panama Canal and had reached San Francisco, and in four weeks more I had crossed the world’s widest, most peaceful, and bluest ocean, the Pacific.
There, like a string of pearls hanging from the golden Equator, I found thousands of wonderful islands of all sizes, but only two of them are very large. I found also my new and kind young friends: Fil; his sister Filippa; Fil’s boy playmate named Moro, who came from the large southern island; their parents and friends; and the good Padre. Each one of them was shorter and darker than I. Yet they said to me: “The Stars and Stripes, now our flag also, makes us all American brothers, which we will be always.”
“But how is it that you are called Filipinos, and live in the Philippine Islands?” I asked.
Fil smiled and said: “Though I believe you know without asking me, I shall tell you to show that I know our romantic and interesting history.
“Hundreds of years ago, many years before America became a nation, the roving Spaniards discovered these islands, and named them the Philip-pines, in honor of their king Philip. When the American Admiral Dewey won these islands from Spain, our name was not changed.
“And our Christian names of Fil and Filippa have the same sound, and almost the same meaning, as Philippines,” added Filippa, her eyes smiling from under her cloud of beautiful hair,—hair longer and richer than an American girl’s hair,—and eyes darker and deeper than an American girl’s eyes. Perhaps her brows were a little bit flatter, and her nose was a little bit shorter and wider, than ours; but still she was pretty, especially when she smiled, for she had beautiful white teeth.
Then I turned to Fil’s playmate, Moro, and asked him what his rolling name could mean. Moro was even more eager and darker than Fil. He replied, as he bravely touched his toy sword:
“I, too, am of the Malay race, but of a different religion from Fil. I am a Mohammedan; that is, I reverence the same prophets whom the Turks worship. I come from the southern islands of the Philippines. There we spend most of our time roving in boats, and hunting over the hills. The first white man who met us saw that we were as dark, and had the same religion, as the tribes of Morocco in Africa. That perhaps is why I am called Moro, the Mohammedan, whose father fears no man; nor shall I, when I grow up.”
