Mindanao and Sulu

Manila: Sugar News Press, 1905. Very good.. 22pp. Photographically illustrated. Oblong quarto. Original pictorial wrappers, stapled. Moderate dust-soiling and edge wear. Light even toning to text. An early and seemingly-unrecorded promotional touting the people and scenery in Mindanao and Sulu in the southern Philippines in the first decade of the 20th century. The work opens with a Foreword detailing the positive aspects of Mindanao, particularly its principal city, described here as the "Metropolis of Mindanao and Sulu" with "a population of more than thirty thousand, a mixture of Moros or Mohammedan Filipinos, Christian Filipinos, Chinese, Japanese and Europeans." Following the Foreword, the remainder of the work is mostly comprised of thirty-four duotone photographs, printed mostly two per page but occasionally with from one to five per page. The photographs feature numerous scenic and street views in and around Zamboanga, including various "Moro houses," and about fifteen portraits of indigenous Filipinos such as a "Moro woman weaving materials for head-turbans and sarongs," a view inside a "weaving school," "Yakan Moros on the island of Basilan," "Muhammad Jamallul, Sultan of Sulu," "Joloano Warriors," "Moro Kulintang" and their musical instruments, Bogobo and Cotabato warriors, "Bajaos - the sea gypsies of Sulu," and "Bogobo musicians."

The final two pages of the work are taken up with two poems -- the first is a traditional Filipino poem entitled "No Te Vayas," noted as "Zamboanga's 'Auld Lang Syne" and one titled simply "Zamboanga" by Susan Hart Dyer. The front cover is decorated with a central photograph of an indigenous sailing vessel surrounded by an illustrated beach scene signed at bottom left, "Jh. Mendoza." The inside front cover contains an illustration of the Philippine Islands from Batanes down to Sulu. We could locate no other copies of the work by title and imprint information in OCLC. (Inventory #: 5045)