PART II
APO'S PERPETUAL CHALLENGE
Before the coming of Christianity, the challenge
of Apo was probably seldom accepted by the Manobos and Bagobos and other
tribes who lived in its shadow. Apo to them was a dreaded mountain, a place
to be revered and avoided, the home of the angry god Mandarangan. It was
Don Jose de Oyanguren in the middle of the nineteenth century who made
the first attempt to climb Apo of which we have record; and he paid very
dearly for it.
The Tragedy Of Oyanguren
Jose Oyanguren was a Basque, a native of the town
of Vergara in the province of Guipuzcoa, and he was apparently well endowed
with the virtues of his race -- of which the chief was courage. Being a
Basque and being also a Liberal, he was not well-liked in Spain. To escape
political persecution he came to the Islands in 1825 and became a trader.
In that capacity he went to Mindanao in 1830 and resided in what was then
called the province of Caraga on the Pacific coast. But he moved about
in Mindanao, sailing along its entire coast-line. Among the places he visited
was the Gulf of Davao when that entire region was still (nominally at least)
in Muslim hands.
Eventually, Oyanguren returned to Manila, studied
law and for a few years served as a judge in what was then called the Province
off Tondo (a province that has changed its name several times; it is now
called the Province of Rizal). In 1847 Oyanguren got the chance to do something
really great.
In 1844 the Muslim Sultan of Mindanao had ceded
the Davao territory to the Spanish Government. Hearing of this, Oyanguren
conceived a plan for pacifying and developing that immense territory. Accordingly,
he sailed back to Davao to see if his plan was feasible. Being convinced
that it was, he returned to Manila and submitted to the Governor General
(Claveria) a proposal for the colonization of Davao.
Basically, Oyanguren's proposal was not unlike
that which Columbus had made to Ferdinand and Isabella in the fifteenth
century, or (nearer home) that which Esteban Rodriguez de Figueroa in the
sixteenth century had made to the Spanish Governor in Manila. Rodriguez
de Figueroa had offered to equip an expedition and recruit an army at his
own expense and to colonize the entire region that we now call Cotabato.
In exchange, he asked for a monopoly of trade with the new territory for
the period of "two lives" -- his own and his heir's.
Oyanguren's terms for Davao were more modest.
Like Figueroa he also offered to equip an expedition and to recruit an
army at his own expense (or that of a company which he formed). He undertook
to develop Davao, also at his own expense: to establish towns and villages,
to pacify the Muslims (or expel them from the territory), to make friends
with the animist tribes, to bring in missionaries, to build roads, to establish
a government -- in short, to make Davao (which was then largely unexplored)
into a regular Province of the Philippines. His price for doing this was
the governorship of Davao for ten years and the monopoly of its commerce
for six.
The central government in Manila accepted the
proposal -- but they added a condition that would eventually defeat the
project: they saddled Oyanguren also with the administration of the towns
on the distant Pacific Coast which had previously been under the Province
of Caraga. Oyanguren, too sanguine in his hopes, accepted the imposed condition,
and in February 1847 Governor Claveria issued a decree creating him governor
of Davao for ten years, and granting him the power to raise an army.
The expedition was equipped, the "army' (not
a large one, as we shall see) was recruited, and Oyanguren sailed from
Manila Bay to the Gulf of Davao. He established his capital in the village
of Davao (which he renamed Nueva Vergara, after his native town). To take
care of Christians who had come with him, and to convert the tribes in
the interior, a Recoleto missionary went to Davao. And gradually, from
the wilderness, he began to carve out a new province to which he gave the
name of his own homeland in the Basque region of Spain: he called it the
Province of Nueva Guipuzcoa.
Oyanguren could not have been in Davao long
without noticing that magnificent sulfur-clad mountain to the west. But
for the first five years of his administration he was too busy to attend
to such luxuries as mountain climbing. It was in 1852, five years after
his arrival in Davao, that he finally found the time. He organized an expedition
-- the first of which we have record -- to climb Mount Apo.
It was a large expedition: sixty-seven men.
There was, of course, Oyanguren himself with two officers -- an army lieutenant
and a naval officer. He also took along thirty soldiers -- one-third of
his entire "army". With them, he also took along twenty penal exiles, thirteen
Bagobos, and two other (Christian) civilians.
There were of course no roads. They went down
the coast to the mouth of the Tagulaya River and walked upstream along
its banks, intending thereby to get to its source in the mountains and
then climb Apo. It must have been a frightful experience. Half the expedition
were soldiers: but they could not have had much experience in jungle-fighting:
and these were fierce jungles that they were now entering. "They encountered
so many hardships" (says the chronicler) "and so much suffering that they
had to return without accomplishing their mission."
The expedition was not only a failure: it was
a fatal disaster. Twenty of the sixty-seven men died shortly after their
return. They had doubtless been weakened by exhaustion, and perhaps by
disease from malarial mosquitoes or other insects.
Oyanguren himself survived, but he did not stay
long in Davao. For Governor Claveria had gone out of office, and his successor,
the Marquis of Solana, did not believe in Oyanguren's project. Quite unjustly,
in violation of contract, Oyanguren was suddenly deprived of the governorship
as well as of his right to the monopoly of trade. He appealed to the Audiencia,
but in vain. He died in Manila in 1859, a ruined man.
But he had begun the development of Davao. He
had also participated in the exploration of the interior of Cotabato. One
biographer, lamenting the injustice that the Spanish Government had done
to Oyanguren, has remarked that this intrepid lawyer, who was also a conquistador,
had died: "perhaps without suspecting that he would always have an honorable
place in history of the development of Mindanao."
Real's Expedition
Such a disaster as that which overtook Oyanguren's
expedition would naturally discourage any further attempts, and for eighteen
years the mountain was left strictly alone. At least by Christians, for
we are not certain whether during this time the Bagobos ever got to the
summit of their greatly feared mountain.
In 1870 a second attempt was made by a somewhat
smaller expedition organized by Real, commander of the district. By this
time the district was no longer called the Province of Nueva Guipuzcoa,
but was now again called Davao. The expedition consisted of one "patron"
and thirty sailors, "con los recursos necesarios". They tried to
approach the mountain by way of Tabon. But "encountering dangers and hardships
at every step of the way," they had to turn back in defeat, though at least
there were no casualties. Ten more years elapsed before another attempt
was made.
Rajal's Conquest 1880
In 1880, twenty-eight years after Oyanguren's disastrous
expedition and ten years after Real's, a third and this time a successful
attempt was made under Don Joaquin Rajal, who had just been made Governor
of Davao.
Joaquin Rajal y Larre was an officer of infantry
of the Spanish army who served as civil governor in various Philippine
provinces. He belonged to a vanishing breed of military men: the men of
action who were also men of letters. Pardo de Tavera in his Biblioteca
filipina has listed some of Rajal's works. They include a report on
the province of Nueva Ecija (published in Madrid in 1890), a lecture on
the island of Mindanao (published by the Geographical Society of Madrid
in 1885), and a book of over 200 pages called Exploracion del territorio
de Davao, published also in Madrid in 1891. It was this last mentioned
work that contained his account of the Apo expedition. Not listed b Pardo
de Tavera was a two-volume edition of Rajal's works, of which the first
volume contained maps, pencil drawings, and water-color sketches.
This enterprising man ("hombre de valor"
as Father Mateo Gisbert called him) was only thirty-three years old when
appointed Governor of Davao. On his way to assume his post, aboard a vessel
that set sail from Zamboanga and Basilan, he made the acquaintance of a
fellow passenger, Dr. Joseph Montano, a Frenchman who was on a scientific
survey of the Philippines and Malaysia. The two became friends and when
Rajal decided to make his assault upon Apo, Montano was invited to come
along. Montano was himself only thirty-six at the time. His presence gave
the expedition an international as well as scientific character, and his
writings (published in Paris) gave it world-wide publicity among the learned.
Governor Rajal also invited Father Mateo Gisbert
S.J. to join the expedition. Father Gisbert was a Spanish Jesuit who had
arrived in the Philippines that very year (1880) to begin a missionary
career in Mindanao which was to last a quarter of a century. He was assigned
to the mission of Davao. In the course of the next twenty-three years he
became an expert on the culture of the Bagobo tribes. He knew their customs
and their language, and he compiled a dictionary of the Bagobo tongue which
was published in Manila three years later.
All that was in the future. In 1880 Father Gisbert
was a young priest of thirty-three, ready for adventure and prepared for
hardships -- of which they encountered plenty.
Datu Manig's Terms
For the success of any expedition into the interior,
it was essential to enlist the cooperation of the warlike Bagobos. This,
Governor Rajal and Father Gisbert were able to obtain, but with some difficulty.
One of the principal chieftains of the tribe was a fiery individual whose
name the chroniclers could not quite spell. Montano called him Datu Mani.
The Irish Jesuit scientist, Father Doyle, called him Datu Manip. But Father
Gisbert, who knew him best, called him Datu Manig -- and doubtless that
was his name.
Manig at first refused to cooperate. He tried
to discourage the project with dire predilections of failure. But Rajal's
insistence won the day, and Manig provided the expedition with an escort
of Bagobos. He agreed to do so, however, on his own terms -- and even at
this distant date, one can only admire the proud independence of this warlike
chieftain who agreed to treat the Spaniards as friends and as equals, not
as masters. Manig laid down three conditions: the Bagobos, he said would
accompany the expedition as an armed escort; but they would not carry any
of the baggage; and when they came to the actual ascent of Mount Apo, the
Bagobos would follow, not lead.
On one point, however, Manig yielded to the
insistence of both Governor Rajal and Father Gisbert: he agreed to go on
the expedition without making a human sacrifice to appease the god Mandarangan.
Thus escorted, the Rajal expedition (composed of Filipinos, Spaniards and one Frenchman) left Davao on the 6th of October, 1880, and reached the summit of Apo on the 10th.
Accounts Of The Expedition
Three independent accounts of this expedition have
been published. As mentioned earlier, Governor Rajal's account was published
in Madrid. Dr. Montano's in Paris. But the first account to appear in print
was that of Father Mateo Gisbert. It was also the first one written: for
it was dated from Davao on 19 October 1880, only nine days after the expedition
had reached the mountain-top. Father Gisbert's account took the form of
a long letter to the Jesuit Superior in Manila, which was subsequently
included in the annual collection of letters from the missions published
in Manila in 1881.
Apart from the glory of having conquered the
highest of Philippine mountains, the Rajal expedition had several side
effects. For one thing it drew the attention of scholars everywhere to
the ethnography as well as the flora of the Apo region. For another (and
this was a much greater achievement) it opened the way for the Christianization
of the tribes in the interior of Davao. As Father Gisbert pointed out,
the conquest of Apo led to the eventual overthrow of Mandarangan and the
other savage gods.
Dr. Joseph Montano made a similar remark. Montano's
account was contained in his book entitled Voyage aux Philippines et
en Malaisie, Which first appeared serially in a Paris magazine and
later issued in book form in 1886. The 351-page volume contained illustrations,
plates and maps. The following year, one of Montano's articles which had
first appeared in Paris, was translated into Spanish and published in Madrid
under the title Excursions al interior de Mindanao. In addition
to his one-volume book, Montano likewise published a two-volume Report
on his trip to the Far East, intended for the French Ministry of Education.
The following passage is taken from his Voyage aux Philippines.
The Schadenberg-Koch Expedition 1881-1882
But if Spain and France could get to the summit
of the highest mountain in the Philippines, could Germany be far behind?
Germany lost no time in getting to the top, in the person of two scientists,
Alex Schadenberg and Otto Koch. There was a big splurge of publicity given
to the Schadenberg-Koch expedition. The primary source was an account sent
by them from Davao and published in two issues of the Diario de Manila
in April 1882. Ferdinand Blumentritt saw this account and translated it
into German; his translation appeared in Brunschweig that same year. It
soon appeared also in French in the bulletin of the Societe Academique
Indo-chinoise (Paris 1883-1885). Finally it appeared in Spanish in the
bulletin of the Geographical Society of Madrid.
Schadenberg, a native of Breslau, had come to
the Philippines to accept a position as chemist in the wholesale drug firm
of Pablo Sartorius, which afterwards became the Botica Boie. Towards the
end of 1881 he and another German, Otto Koch, went on a scientific expedition
to southern Mindanao. By December they had established themselves in the
Bagobo village of Sibulan. During their stay of about six months in the
area they made important ethnographic studies, drew up a vocabulary of
the language, assembled an extensive collection of botanical and zoological
specimens (including thousands of butterflies) which they got with the
help of a young Bagobo whom they had trained for the work. One of their
most interesting discoveries, north of the volcano, was a giant parasite
(Rafflesia
Schadenbergia Greppert), the open flower of which measured eighty centimeters
in diameter. We are told that young buds of this plant, growing together
on one stem, were found on one occasion to weigh as heavily as a double-barreled
gun and six solid bullets.
They climbed Mount Apo in February 1882. Starting
from Sibulan (700 meters above sea level), they and their party of Bagobos
who carried their photographic and other equipment (for the Bagobos had
become more accommodating) went up a conical rise of some 2000 feet elevation
and dropped down to the Balacio River which ran northwards to where it
joined the Sibulan. Then they began the ascent of the skirts of Apo, spending
the night at the villages of Tagudaya (the Germans spelled in Tagodeia),
some 1150 meters above sea level, from where one could see the whole of
the eastern coast of Davao, and the islands of Samal and Talicut and the
town of Davao. It was a cold night. The temperature early the following
morning was 13C. Their journey next day lay through virgin forest with
trees over a hundred feet in height and the vines over thirty feet long.
At a height of 1320 meters they forded the Vaigmainit River, which according
to the natives was extremely hot at its source. Farther up they came upon
another torrent with the waters rushing down, but undrinkable because they
contained sulfuric acid in solution. The air was likewise thick with sulfuric
fumes. At 2700 meters they found the first solfatara in the form of a large
crack with others of smaller size, emitting sulfuric gas in large quantity.
The ground was hot and strong rumblings could be heard like the sound of
a ship's motor.
It was here (they claimed) that they found a
brick tile with the inscription: "Apo, Unica expedicion Rajal, 1880."
The implication was obvious: Schadenberg and Koch were apparently suggesting
that they were the first to get to the peak of Mount Apo, and that
Rajal's expedition had never reached the top. This of course would mean
that not only Rajal, but also Dr. Joseph Montano and Father Mateo Gisbert
(who had each published detailed account of their conquest of Apo) were
all lying. If this was what the German climbers intended, they perhaps
overplayed their hand. Smith, the official geologist of the Philippine
government, put it quite bluntly: he said Rajal's commemorative tile was
either "carelessly" or "maliciously" removed from the top where it had
originally placed and brought down to an altitude of 2350 meters. The implication
for Schadenberg and Koch are not pleasant.
Upon descending from the summit, Schadenberg
and Koch found two new solfataras below the northeast peak which did not
exist when Rajal's expedition was made. About a hundred meters lower an
odorless water vapor was leaping out. From there they started on their
journey downward without incident (except a torrential rain which made
the trail difficult) and arrived back at their headquarters in Sibulan.
The Jesuit Expedition Of 1888
The third ascent of Mount Apo was made by the Manila
Observatory in 1888 for the purpose of making magnetic measurements. Father
Martin Juan S.J., founder and head of the magnetic division of the Observatory,
and Father John Doyle S.J. of the Ateneo de Manila, set sail from Manila
aboard the Luzon on 4 April on a voyage that was to take them through
Palawan, Zamboanga and Cotabato, arriving in Davao in early May. They lost
no time in preparing for the ascent of Apo, enlisting for the purpose the
help of the governor of Davao and of Father Mateo Gisbert, the veteran
of the Rajal expedition, who consented to accompany them as far as Datu
Manig's village.
They left Davao at 5 a.m. on 8 May and went
with all their equipment by banca to the mouth of the Tagulaya to the Moro
village of Darong. The Muslims received them hospitably, and they were
joined that same day by two sets of armed escort: one provided by the governor,
of twelve men with Remington guns, the other of Bagobos led by the son
of Datu Manig who walked ahead of his men armed to the teeth with shield
and kris and other warlike implements. It looked more a warlike than a
scientific expedition, but Father Doyle, who tells the story, noted a happy
coincidence: it was the feast of St. Michael the Archangel, the conqueror
of demons, and the banca they had come on was called San Miguel.
It seemed an appropriate beginning for a journey to the lofty lair of the
demon Mandarangan.
From Darong they went through forests and cogon
fields to the home of Datu Manig. They were a large party, for besides
the Christians and Bagobos, the Muslims of Darong also accompanied them
part of the way. Their next stop was Tagudaya, Datu Bitil's territory.
The rest of Father Doyle's account of this expedition
makes excellent reading for its anthropological, geographical and botanical
detail, not to mention its human interest. We are told of the Bagobo bicharras;
and how the Bagobos listened gravely to the sounds of an automatic organ
which Father Gisbert had brought along; how Datu Bitil's villagers were
highly amused by the attracting power of magnets which were part of the
Jesuit's scientific equipment; and how all the Bagobos put on complete
regalia to pose for photographs. One night there was an earthquake (a "temblor
de oscilacion in northwest-southwest direction"). The next morning
Father Martin Juan fell off his horse. He was of course a scientist, not
a horseman, and in any case, even good horsemen can fall of in the jungles.
But if they were not good horseman, they were
excellent hikers for they soon had to leave their horses behind and the
walking required great courage and resistance. "Tanto el P. Juan como
yo quedamos sepultados varias veces hasta el cuello en medio del espeso
ramaje, y si al fin superamos la dificultad fue a costa de sumo trabajo
y no pocas heridas." (We were many times neck-deep in the dense growth,
and when we finally extricated ourselves it was at the cost of much labor
and not a few scratches.)
This was the first scientific expedition sent
by the Manila Observatory to Apo. It was a costly expedition, for it almost
certainly hastened Father Martin Juan's death. He died two months later,
in Surigao, before he could return to Manila.
Father Barrado 1892
Between 1889 and the turn of the century we have
no record of any further expeditons to Apo, except that of Father Eusebio
Barrado S.J. who made an eleven -day journey in 1892 from Kabacan (in Cotabato)
to Davao across the mountains and over the northern flanks of Apo at a
height of some 2000 feet. Two years previously, Father Barrado had explored
the Pulangi, being the first man to follow that great river almost in its
entirety -- from Linabo in Bukidnon to Tamontaca in Cotabato, near the
river's mouth.
Father Barrado did not climb Apo itself. But
his letters to Father Miguel Roses, Rector of the Ateneo de Manila, gives
valuable information on the topography and vegetation along the trail.
This journey was important as is showed that Apo could be approached from
the northwest, i.e. from the Cotabato side -- a route fully exploited thirty-six
years later by Governor Gutierrez, and by all subsequent Jesuit expeditions,
including our own of 1958.
Early Twentieth Century Expeditions
During the forty-one years between 1900 and the
outbreak of war in 1941 we have record of about ten expeditions to Apo
or the Apo area, although there may have been others of which we have no
knowledge.
The first of these was by Phelps Whitmarsh,
an American corespondent who found himself in Davao for an enforced stay
of about a month. He climbed Mount Apo in company with Lieutenant C. O.
Thomas of the local garrison. They approached Apo from the east, from Astorga
and Datu Bitil's territory and spent a night at the top.
An important expedition was that of Warren D
Smith in 1907-1908. Smith was head of the Division of Geology and Mines
of the Bureau of Science, and he was interested both in the geology of
the Apo region and in the commercial possibilities of the sulphur deposits
near the summit. It was during this ascent that the official figure was
obtained of the mountain's height: 9690 feet. (Actually two separate readings
made by hypsometer gave two different figures in meters: 2956 and 2902.)
At the summit Smith found a brass tube deposited in a cairn by Dr. E. B.
Copeland who had ascended to the top in 1904. The tube had a screw to marked
S. C. Inside was a neat scroll of the Sierra Club of California.
In 1914 John M. Garvan went to the Apo area
to collect ethnological specimens for the Pacific-Panama Exposition. He
claims to have found a new tribe, whose tribal existence was hitherto unknown.
We leave this rather bold claim to the ethnologists to assess.
Bird Collectors
Meanwhile, a regular fever for collecting birds
seems to have developed between 1903 and 1905. Walter Goodfellow, the British
ornithologist who discovered the Mikado Pheasant in Formosa and had led
the British Ornithological Union Expedition to New Guinea, visited Apo
in 1903 and again in 1905. His main purpose seems to have been to collect
live birds for Mrs. Johnstone, a well known aviculturist who received an
award for breeding the lorikeet named after her. Goodfellow's collection
was subsequently acquired by the British Museum. One of his discoveries
was named after Apo: Zosterops volcani.
Likewise in 1903 a Danish ornithologist, Waterstradt,
roamed the area and found, among other birds, two new species: Prionturus
Waterstradti Rothschild and Dicaeum Apo Hartert. Waterstradt
had previously conducted extensive expeditions in Ceylon, Borneo, the Malay
Peninsula, the Moluccas and Palawan.
In 1904 an army surgeon, Major Edgar Alexander
Mearns, climbed Apo, also in search of bird specimens. Among his finds
was a very rare bird, a new genus and species (no other representative
had been seen as of 1929). He called it Leonardia woodi, after the
commanding general of the American forces in Mindanao and Sulu who was
also president in 1903 of the Philippine Scientific Society and was later
to become governor general.
After 1905 there seems to have been a lull in
the bird collecting fever until 1929 when the Japanese ornithologist Masaui
Hachisuka led an expedition to the to of Mount Apo, taking with him a party
of fifty men, mostly Bagobos. He established his bird collecting center
at Galong where a sulphur spring had been discovered by an American about
1915. From the Davao side he climbed Mount Apo, but descended toward Quinatilan
and Kabacan on the Cotabato side, probably along the route followed the
previous year by Governor Gutierrez, of whose expedition we shall speak
below. Hachisuka was thus the first to traverse Apo completely. He left
an inscription at the summit, carved with a bolo upon a rock in Japanese
Kana characters which meant: "Hachisuka, 11, II, 1929." One member of the
party spent a night at the summit to take photographs of the peak. Photographs
(one from afar and one from near) were also taken of the crater lake discovered
the previous year, of which we shall have occasion to speak later.
Apo From The Cotabato Side
The Gutierrez-Bruns expedition of 1928 was historic
as it was the first ascent of Mount Apo from the Cotabato side. The route,
we are told, was discovered by Manobos working for Governor Gutierrez of
Cotabato, but it must have branched off from an ancient route as Father
Barrado in 1892 had gone that way to Davao. Governor Gutierrez, with a
party of American military officers stationed at Manila and Zamboanga,
traveled from Cotabato along the Rio Grande de Mindanao and then climbed
Apo from the northwest. They discovered a lake, without outlet or inlet,
which they called Lake Faggamb. Hachisuka described its water as not clear
but rather amber in color. At the summit, the expedition left a quart bottle
with the following note: "First to climb Mount Apo/From the Cotabato side/Lieut.
Col. E. C. Bruns/Gov. D. Gutierrez/Capt. L. L. Gardner/Lieut. A. Montera/Major
A. S. Fletcher February 16, 1928." The bottle was placed securely in a
cache on the pinnacle of the highest peak, and there it was found a year
later by Hachisuka, who in his account quotes liberally from Major Fletcher's
notebook.
The Napan Trail 1939
On 9 May 1936 President Manuel L. Quezon signed
Proclamation No. 59 which set aside Mt. Apo as a reserved forest and national
park. The reservation comprised 76,900 hectares. Among the projects proposed
for the development and beautification of the park was a road that was
to lead to Napan Hot Spring. A preliminary reconnaissance for this road
was undertaken by the Bureau of Forestry from 20 to 25 March 1939. The
party climbed to the top of Mount Apo, and a detailed report was made to
the Director of the Bureau of Forestry, Florencio Tamesis, by Ranger Rufino
A. Sabado who took part in the ascent. This manuscript report contains
a detailed description both of the trail and of the vegetation along it.
Father Selga had intended to publish it in 1941 as an appendix to his Bibliography
on Apo.
The Ateneo de Cagayan Ascent 1941
In 1941 Father Theodore E. Daigler S.J. and three
students of the Ateneo de Cagayan, with a party of Manobo guides and porters,
climbed to the to of Mount Apo by way of Muaan in Cotabato. Father Daigler's
account deserves to be published. Father Selga had intended to publish
it in 1941 as an appendix to his Bibliography.
With the outbreak of the war, of course, all
excursions to Apo had to stoop. It is interesting to note that in the U.S.
Army maps for 1945, while minute details of topography are given for all
places, Apo and its immediate environs are left blank for want of information.
The U.S. Army intelligence units cannot have consulted the published material
on Apo, nor even the reports of the Army officers who climbed the mountain
with Governor Gutierrez in 1928.
Post-War Ascents
But after the war, there have been excursions to
Apo almost yearly. In 1948 an American zoologist, Charles H. Wharton, spent
several fruitful months in the environs of Apo, photographing animals and
birds. His account and photographs are extremely interesting. In 1950 a
party of five Americans also ascended the mountain by the Cotabato trail,
one of them a woman. I have no further information about them except that
their guide, a Cebuano who had settled in the Mua-an area and who had never
before visited Apo, was also our guide in 1958, his second visit to the
mountain.
Several of the post-war expeditions have been
by Jesuits, especially those stationed at the Ateneo de Davao. Father Joseph
Smith and Ruben Ruiz made the climb in 1952 and have left a manuscript
account. Other Jesuits followed, some successful, others not. One Jesuit
who has gone to the summit three different times is Father Francisco Claver
S.J., a native of the Mountain Province in Luzon, whose agility and speed
along the difficult mountain trails has amazed even the best Manobo guides
and hunters.
Against this historic background of a whole
century of grappling with this great mountain, our own modest expedition
of 1958 dwindles into insignificance. Yet it was not without a historic
justification. and it was this climb -- or rather the wide publicity that
it subsequently received -- that helped to draw the attention of many towards
this noble Mountain which has now become easy of access.
After us, several other parties have climbed
mount Apo, including one headed by Alejandro Roces, who was Secretary of
Education at the time. Doubtless many more will climb Apo in after years.
For Apo is the kind of mountain that will always remain a perpetual challenge,
and a perpetual invitation.