THE LANDSLIDE-STRICKEN town of St. Bernard in Southern Leyte was created on Dec. 9, 1954, by virtue of Executive Order No. 84 signed by then President Ramon Magsaysay.

It was gerrymandered from its mother town of Cabalian, and was centered at the former Barrio Himatayon, Cabalian’s oldest and most progressive village located west of the town.

Alberto E. Lesiguez, editor of the weekly The Tacloban Star and native of Cabalian, said the split from the mother town was engineered by a former Leyte governor who almost always lost his election battles to an opposing clan in the mother town.

A few years later, in June 1961, Cabalian itself changed its name to San Juan, citing negative connotations of its name, with the key word “bali,” which in Bisayan means “to break or to cut.”

Cabalian was the first large settlement in Leyte islands to be described in the chronicles of Conquistador Miguel Lopez de Legazpi in 1565.

From their southern Samar anchorage, a team led by Martin de Goiti, riding on a small boat, searched for a settlement along the coast of the two main islands facing Leyte Gulf from where they could procure food for the hungry crew. They eventually came to the southern part of Leyte, to a sheltered bay, where they saw for the first time since their arrival a large village comprising of over 200 houses.

From the sea, the Spanish searchers saw scores of people engaged in some activities, while visible in the background were extensive rice fields. Near the shore were three large paraw being loaded with rice. Sacks and bundles of root crops piled on the beach.

The Spaniards concluded that the paraw were owned by outsiders coming to buy provisions. The name of the place they discovered was Cabalian.

The search team hurried back to their ships anchored near Guiuan, Samar. The entire expedition arrived in Cabalian in the morning of March 6, 1565. A ship’s pilot described this Leyte village in its pristine condition as follows:

“When we anchored within view of Cabalian, we saw a thickly planted grove of coconut trees and houses between the trees. A little farther inland, a steep cliff and on the slopes more houses, and beyond this again many big rice fields and plots of millet and similar crops were to be seen. A great commotion broke out as our ships came to anchor, big crowds congregating among the houses and palm trees, gazing at the ships and apparently afraid to approach the shore. Pigs, chickens, and dogs were to be seen roving around everywhere.”

When some officials of San Juan sought this author’s help last year in seeking historical data that would serve as basis for their town’s foundation day, we found records which showed that Cabalian was officially separated from the town of Malitbog on Sept. 15, 1860, and its parish was established four months later.

And so, San Juan celebrated its first ever foundation day last Sept. 15, the old Cabalian’s 145th anniversary.

This author coordinated the work on Cabalian history with Pablo Suarez, administrator of the San Juan Campus of Southern Leyte University (SLU).

One of the mysteries that Suarez and I have been trying to solve was the location of a missing landmark that was described in the Legazpi chronicles. This was a steep cliff a little farther inland on which slopes were found more houses, and beyond which there were many large rice fields and plots of millet.

The insight came after I met Lesiguez at a press conference last Saturday. While discussing the St. Bernard landslides, he casually mentioned his hometown folklore about a volcanic eruption in Cabalian in the 17th century.

Suddenly, I had a specific location for a volcanic eruption in Leyte in 1749, which was reported by the Augustinian friar Agustin Maria de Castro sometime in 1770. He said, “In the year forty-nine [i.e., 1749], the volcano [presumably Mt. Cabalian, farther to the east of the town], exploded with fire from six mouths.

"For two weeks the sun could not be seen by day, and the temblors lasted a whole year and continued later, resulting in pestilence, lightning and annoying rains of ash.”

Before the above sentence, Father De Castro mentioned related disasters in the preceding years.

He said, “In the years of forty-three and forty-four [i.e., 1743-44], there were strong earthquakes that ruined many towns and a mountain collapsed about a hundred fathoms [i.e., 600 feet].”

It is probable that the collapsed mountain that Father De Castro mentioned was closer to Cabalian and was the same steep cliff mentioned in the Legazpi chronicles, but is now inexistent.

Last Friday’s collapse of an entire side of Mt. Can-abag in St. Bernard seems to be just a reprise of the total collapse of a nearby mountain more than 260 years ago.

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