| Al amanecer contemplabamos desde
el vapor la cumbre del monte Apo, por donde revienta el crater de un volcan; la cumbre, cubierta de azufre, parecia nevada con el reflejo de los rayos del sol. --Jose Fernandez Cuevas S.J. (1860) |
PART I
THE MYSTERIOUS MOUNTAIN
From the city of Davao on a clear day, one can see
a high mountain that rises in the west. Its head is almost always lost
in clouds; but in the early morning when the air is clear and the sky cloudless,
it towers in spectacular grandeur, its eastern face gleaming with a white
covering that looks like snow. This is Apo, which historians and cartographers
have called the highest of Philippine mountains.
A snow-capped mountain in the tropics is of
course an oddity, and Apo's white-covered summit has naturally aroused
speculation. My attention to this unusual phenomenon was first called from
an unexpected quarter. The Carmelite nuns are a cloistered congregation
shut off from the world; but though they shun the world of men, they love
to look out upon the world of God, to gaze at the beauty of sky and sea
and mountain. From the windows of their monastery in Davao they can see
the splendor of Apo. One of the nuns born and bred in France under the
shadow of Mont Blanc, was talking behind the grille. One could not see
her face, but in her voice one could sense the vitality of those who love
the mountains She wanted to know what that glistening substance was that
crowned Mt. Apo, for she was of course certain that it was neither ice
nor snow.
She was right. It is neither ice nor snow. It
is sulphur. Indeed, what seems white from afar is really not white but
yellow. The best way to appreciate this fact is to go up in an airplane
in the early morning to a height of some eight thousand feet. The mountain
itself is almost ten thousand feet high: but at eight thousand feet, one
can get a full view of the mountain's magnificent cone gleaming golden-yellow
in the morning sun.
Scientists, of course, and missionaries have
known the true nature of the "snow" atop Mount Apo. As early as 1660 the
Jesuit historian, Father Francisco Colin, had noted that this volcano was
giving out sulfur, In 1900 Phelps Whitmarsh reported that the sulphur field
"covers perhaps ten acres (and) is about one thousand feet below the crater
. . . Scattered over this area were eight or ten sulphur cones from six
to twenty feet high, and hundreds of smaller jets. They were shaped at
the top like a steamship's ventilator and emitted choking fumes with a
noise half puff and half grunt and had incrusted the entire surroundings
with about an inch of sulphur."
Yet even well-informed men could not help noting
how much the sulphur resembled snow. In 1860 the Jesuit Superior, Father
Jose Fernandez Cuevas, was making a voyage to various places in Mindanao
to survey the possibility of reestablishing the Jesuit mission there. From
the deck of his steamer as it sailed up the Gulf of Davao he saw "at daybreak
the summit of Mount Apo . . . covered with sulphur which in the reflected
rays of the sun looked like snow." The British ornithologist, Walter Goodfellow,
who visited Apo in 1903 and again in 1905, remarked that "The white slope
viewed from a distance conveys the impression of a snow-capped summit,
and it is difficult to believe that it is not so. At sunrise and sunset
it glows with all the beautiful tints of a snowy peak."
These were well-informed men. But there have
been others less well informed. In 1930 Father Miguel Selga S.J. of the
Manila Observatory was amused at the report sent from Davao that from the
belfry of the church the "snow" on Apo could be seen! Incautious journalists
have rushed to the periodicals breathless with the "news" -- and unwary
editors have published a picture or two (taken of course from a great distance)
purporting to "prove" -- that snow had fallen at last upon a Philippine
mountain, only seven degrees north of the equator.
The Mountain's Name
It is not surprising that such a mountain, so majestic,
so alive with mysterious energies, should exercise a spell upon the primitive
imagination. To the Muslims of the river valleys of Cotabato who lived
afar off and who could thus look upon the mountain with detached objectivity,
Apo was not a very fearful mountain. They gave it a matter-of-fact name
-- Sandayan -- meaning solfatara. The suggestion has been made that
the "Sicarnan" in Orozco's map of the Philippines (1699) and in Murillo
Velarde's (1734) was a misspelling of Sandaya. When we climbed Mount
Apo in 1958, our Manobo guides and porters told us that the "white slopes"
(i.e. the sulphur deposit) of Apo are called Sandaya.
But to the peoples who lived nearer the mountain,
in the forests and hills that surround it (for no one lives upon Apo itself),
this enormous piece of rock, reaching to the sky, clothed more than half-way
in dense mysterious forests, and emitting smoke from half a dozen solfataras,
was a compelling presence indeed. They gave it a respectful name -- Apo
-- which means both "lord" (with connotations of superiority and power)
and "ancient ancestor", the "grandfather of mountains."
Human Sacrifice
To the tribes that lived around Apo -- the Atas
to the north, the Bagobos to the east and southeast, the Guiangas, the
Calangas, Culamans, Tagacaolos, and the Bilaans farther off -- Apo was
a dreaded mountain. To the Bagobos it was the home of Mandarangan, "god
of the gore", who dwelt upon a throne of fire, forever thirsting for human
blood. Each year at stated intervals, or whenever there was any calamity
public or private, or when they had to approach the mountain, they would
placate the wrath of Mandarangan with the blood of a human victim, usually
a slave whom they had captured or bought from the Sarangani Bay area. They
even made a business of the whole affair. Father Cuevas reports: "They
speculate on these bloody holocausts, demanding a fee from all those whose
wish to enjoy the barbarous delight of inflicting wounds upon the victim.
The members of these tribes have the custom of paying for an assassination,
by giving to the interested parties a certain number of porcelain plates
which serve them for money."
The callousness with which the Bagobos butchered
their victims was in keeping with the callousness with which they butchered
their own children when born deformed, with the result that the Bagobos
were a remarkably handsome race -- the envy, doubtless, of the most advanced
eugenists.
Today such savage practices appear to have completely
disappeared, though superstitious offerings of food, tobacco, money and
cloth are still made. We came upon two such sacrifices during our ascent
of Apo in April 1958. But as late as 9 December 1907 a human victim was
killed in sacrifice at Tabon by the Bagobos, of which an account has been
given by a party of geologists who passed through that was a month later.
What The Geologists Say
The geologists tell us some interesting facts about
Apo. They tell us that it is a volcanic cone built up in Pleistocene or
in "recent" geologic time. ("Recent" to the geologist would be extremely
ancient to most of us.) They also tell us that Apo does not arise directly
out of the plain, as does Arayat in Central Luzon (or Nui Ba Den in Viet
Nam). Mount Apo sits upon the shoulder of another mountain, which of course
gives it additional height. "Sitting" is of course my term: the geologists
call it "burying." In other words, Apo is like a rider on horse-back, the
horse being the cordillera or mountain-range that stretches across the
island of Mindanao from north to south, from Diwata and Sipaca Points in
the north to Sarangani Bay in the south. Apo, moreover, is a rider sitting
squarely in the horses back. In technical language: "this volcanic mass
is elongate in the north-south direction and the apex appears to coincide
approximately with the axis of the folded range which it apparently buries."
In this respect Apo differs from other volcanic masses in the area, for
both Mount Matutum and Parker Volcano are built up somewhat to the west
of the axis of the folded range.
Basement rock has been found at various places
along this cordillera, but the rock of Apo itself is igneous. Montano,
who climbed Apo with Governor Rajal and Father Gisbert in 1880, brought
down rock specimens from the summit, which were later identified as andesites.
The chief geologist of the Philippine government, at the time, Warren D.
Smith, climbed Apo in 1908 and also found andesitic rocks. He surmised
that at some time in the immemorial past, Apo must have had a violent explosion,
Krakatoan in magnitude.
Virgin Forests
The fact that Apo is, so to speak, a mountain sitting
upon a whole range of mountains makes it difficult of access. All the more
so, since both the volcano itself (p to a height of 8500 feet) and the
entire mountain range that surrounds it are covered with virgin forests,
semi-temperate in the higher elevations, dense tropical jungles in the
lower. The British ornithologist Walter Goodfellow, whom we have already
quoted, describes the topography well:
Of the forests themselves, Goodfellow says:
This, then is Apo -- the "lord", the "grandfather
of mountains" -- which dominates the entire region that surrounds the Gulf
of Davao. Indeed, it is from Apo's fiery nature that the gulf gets its
name, for we are told that Davao -- a name applied to gulf, city and province
-- was originally Dabaon, a word that means "full of flame".
Such a mountain, so magnificent, so seemingly
inaccessible yet so temptingly near, stands as a perpetual challenge to
all who love the heights. And for the past one hundred years, that challenge
has been repeatedly accepted.