And now let us concentrate our attention upon Luzon as Mr. Root no doubt did, with infinite pains, in the fall of 1899. Of the 7,600,000 people of the Philippines [251] almost exactly one-half, i.e., 3,800,000, [252] live on Luzon, and these are practically all civilized. [253] It so happens that the State of our Union which is nearer the size of Luzon than any other is the one which furnished the first American Civil Governor for the Philippine Islands, Governor Taft. President Taft's native State of Ohio is 41,061 square miles in area, and Luzon is 40,969. [254] Roughly speaking, Luzon may also be said to be about the size of Cuba, [255] though it is about twice as thickly populated as the latter, Cuba, having something over 2,000,000 people to Luzon's nearly 4,000,000. [256]
By all Americans in the Philippines since our occupation, the island of Luzon is always contemplated as consisting of two parts, to wit, northern Luzon, or that part north of Manila, and southern Luzon, the part south of Manila. The great central plain of Luzon, lying just north of Manila, is nearly as large as the republic of Salvador, or the State of New Jersey, i.e., in the neighborhood of 7000 square miles area [257]--and, like Salvador, it contains a population of something over 1,000,000 inhabitants. The area and population of the five provinces of this plain are, according to the Philippine Census of 1903, as follows:
Province Area [258] (sq. m.) Population [259]
Pangasinan 1,193 397,902 Pampanga 868 223,754 Bulacan 1,173 223,742 Tarlac 1,205 135,107 Nueva Ecija 1,950 134,147 ----- --------- 6,389 1,114,652
Roughly speaking, the central plain comprising the above five provinces is bounded as follows: On the north by mountains and Lingayen Gulf, on the east by a coast range of mountains separating it from the Pacific Ocean, on the west by a similar range separating it from the China Sea, and on the south by Manila Bay and mountains. The Rio Grande de Pampanga flows obliquely across it in a southwesterly direction into Manila Bay, and near its western edge runs the railroad from Manila to Dagupan on Lingayen gulf. Dagupan is 120 miles from Manila. This plain, held by a well-equipped insurgent army backed by the moral support of the whole population, became the theatre of war as soon as the volunteers of 1899 began to arrive at Manila, the insurgent capital being then at Tarlac, a place about two-thirds of the way up the railroad from Manila to Dagupan.