MINDANAO AND SULU : II. PHYSIOGRAPHY. 357 



issued, 11 called Dinagat, Dagun, and Linao. The first two are really 

 one and the other is only a few kilometers farther up the river. These 

 bodies of water are very shallow in places, in others there are trees 

 partly submerged. They are navigable for bancas (dugouts), and in 

 one place a channel, navigable for light (3 feet) draught launches, has 

 been located, beginning near Bunauan and ending in the main river. 



Lake Mainit. — This is a smaller lake, more pear-shaped than it appears 

 on the older maps, about 9.5 kilometers in diameter, situated near the 

 northern point of Surigao Peninsula. Its name, meaning hot, its shape, 

 and the more or less high land around it point to the possibility of its 

 being a caldera. 



Mr. Montano, 12 in 1881, wrote as follows concerning Lake Mainit: 



The large lake of Mainit, situated at the center of the peninsula, at an altitude 

 of 40 meters, seems to be the crater of an ancient volcano; it is circular, very 

 deep, and its banks are very steep ; it is surrounded by high mountains, where 

 hot springs abound. He calls attention in another paragraph to some limestone 

 caves on the east side of the lake. 



Besides the moderately large lakes already discussed, there are several 

 smaller ones, like Malanao and Balut near Cotabato ; these are little more 

 than ponds in the chance depressions in the topography. Lakes Malanao 

 and Balut owe their existence to small synclinals in the sandstones and 

 shales just north of the Bio Grande. The same is true of Butig Lake 

 near the southeast corner of Lanao. 



Lakes Munay, Dapao, and Nonungan are due to depressions in the 

 basalt flow which covers most of that region. 



Information concerning Lake , Leonard Wood is confined to a brief 

 mention in a report to the Adjutant-General, United States Army, by 

 Capt. C. C. Smith, Fourteenth Cavalry, concerning an expedition made 

 in June, 1904, from Misamis to Dumaquilis Bay. This lake has an 

 altitude of 889 meters, is shaped like a figure 8, and roughly is 8 

 kilometers long by 3 kilometers wide. 



These bodies of water have played a most important part in the history 

 of Mindanao. The Moro is by nature warlike. He has lived largely near 

 the sea, alternating between the peaceful occupation of fishing and the 

 more exciting sport of plundering villages and taking of slaves. With 

 the coming of the Spaniards, Visayans, and Chinese, and their settling 

 along the coast of Mindanao, numbers of the Moros retreated into the 

 interior as the Subanuns and other primitive peoples had done before 

 them. Naturally, they settled around the inland bodies of water, Lanao 

 and Liguasan, where they could resume their old manner of living with 

 as little interruption and as little change as possible. Therefore, today 

 the last great stronghold of the Moros lies surrounding the upland lake of 



"World Book Co. (1907). 

 , ^Loc. cit., p. 288. 



