By the relinquishment of Cuba and the cession of Porto Rico, the Philippine and Sulu Islands, and Guam, the largest of the Colonial Ladrones, to the United States, as a consequence Posses- of the war of 1898, and of the remaining Ladrone sions, or Marianne Islands, together with the Caroline and Pelew Islands, to Germany by a treaty of the 8th of February 1899, the colonial possessions of Spain were greatly reduced.
Each of the four main groups, viz, the Caroline, Marshall, Gilbert and Ladrone (Mariana), from long isolation, has developed ethnological peculiarities of its own.