๐ช๐ต๐ฒ๐ป ๐๐ฟ๐ผ๐ฐ๐ผ๐ฑ๐ถ๐น๐ฒ๐ ๐ฅ๐ผ๐ฎ๐บ๐ฒ๐ฑ ๐๐ฎ๐ธ๐ฒ ๐ ๐ฎ๐ถ๐ป๐ถ๐
Long before it was known simply as Lake Mainit, the great inland lake of northeastern Mindanao appeared on old maps under another name. On the 1734 Murillo Velarde map, it was marked “Lagua d’ Sapongan.”
The lake was also far wilder than the one we know today.
In 1788, the historical account of the Municipality of Jabonga tells of raiders who came to the settlement and hunted crocodiles because the animals were said to “swarm the Lake Mainit.”
More than a century later, another witness came through.
In May 1889, Fr. Francisco de Paula Sรกnchez, S.J. traveled through northeastern Mindanao on a scientific journey.
Sรกnchez was already connected to Philippine history in another way. Years earlier, at the Ateneo Municipal de Manila, he had taught the young Josรฉ Rizal and became one of the teachers who helped shape Rizal’s talent for literature and writing.
On May 14, 1889, Sรกnchez reached Jabonga.
Three days later, on May 17, he crossed Lake Mainit on his way toward the town of Mainit.
Among the observations from that journey was one remarkable detail:
There were crocodiles in Lake Mainit.
Historian Fr. Leo A. Cullum, S.J., writing about Sรกnchez in Philippine Studies in 1960, preserved the observation in a simple line:
“He tells of the crocodiles in Lake Mainit.”
Imagine crossing in 1889.
There were no highways around the lake. No motorized bancas. Forests reached much closer to the shoreline, and the lake and its rivers were among the main routes connecting settlements.
Travelers crossed in small boats and rafts.
And somewhere in those waters were crocodiles.
The historical account does not identify what species they were. Without additional evidence, it is safer simply to call them what Sรกnchez called them:
crocodiles.
What remains unknown is when they finally disappeared.
No reliable record we have found identifies the last crocodile caught in Lake Mainit, the person who caught it, or the exact year it vanished from the lake.
Perhaps that final story was never written down.
Perhaps somewhere in Jabonga, Mainit, Kitcharao or Alegria, an old family photograph survives—or an elderly resident still remembers a story handed down about the last crocodile seen along the lake.
But the surviving records already leave us with a remarkable picture.
More than a century ago, Josรฉ Rizal’s former teacher crossed Lake Mainit and recorded a landscape where crocodiles still lived.
A very different Lake Mainit.
A time when crocodiles still roamed its waters.
Sources:
Leo A. Cullum, S.J., “Francisco de Paula Sanchez,” Philippine Studies, Vol. 8, No. 2 (1960); Municipality of Jabonga Historical Profile; Pedro Murillo Velarde, Carta Hydrographica y Chorographica de las Yslas Filipinas (1734).
