340 ANNUAL OF SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERY. 



when I last visited it, clothed with vegetation to the summit, and con- 

 tained twelve populous Malay villages. On the 29th of December, 

 1862, after 215 years of "perfect inaction, it again suddenly burst forth, 

 blowing up and completely altering the appearance of the mountain, 

 destroying the greater part of the inhabitants, and sending forth such 

 volumes of ashes as to darken the air at Ternate, forty miles olf, and 

 almost entirely to destroy the growing crops on that and the surround- 

 ing islands. The island of Java contains more volcanoes, active and 

 extinct, than any other known district of equal extent. They are 

 about forty-five in number, and many of them exhibit most beautiful 

 examples of the volcanic cone on a large scale, single or double, with 

 entire or truncated summits, and averaging 10,000 feet high. It is now 

 well ascertained that almost all volcanoes have been slowly built up by 

 the accumulation of the matter mud, ashes, and lava -ejected by 

 themselves. The openings or craters, however, frequently shii't their 

 position ; so that a country may be covered with a more or less irregu- 

 lar series of hills in chains and masses, only here and there rising into 



t 



lofty cones, and yet the whole may be produced by true volcanic ac- 

 tion. In this manner the greater part of Java has been formed. The 

 great island of Sumatra exhibits, in proportion to its extent, a much 

 smaller number of volcanoes ; and a considerable portion of it has had, 

 probably, a non-volcanic origin. Going northward, Amboyna, a part 

 of Bouru, and the west end of Ceram, the north part of Gilolo, and all 

 the small islands around it, the northern extremity of Celebes, and the 

 islands of Siau and Sauguir are wholly volcanic. The Philippine 

 Archipelago contains many active and extinct volcanoes. In striking 

 contrast with this region of subterranean fires, the island of Celebes in 

 all its southern peninsulas, the great mass of Borneo, and the Malay 

 peninsula, are not known to contain a single volcano, active or extinct. 

 To the east of the volcanic band is another quiescent area of 1,000 

 miles wide, the great island of New Guinea being free from volcanoes 

 and earthquakes. Toward its eastern extremity, however, these reap- 

 pear in some small islands off" its coast, and in New Britain, New Ire- 

 land, and the Solomon Islands, which contain active volcanoes. The 

 contrasts of vegetation and of climate in the archipelago may be best 

 considered together, the one being to some extent dependent on the 

 other. Placed immediately upon the equator, and surrounded by ex- 

 t<'nsive oceans, it is not surprising that the various islands of the arch- 

 ipelago should be almost always clothed with a forest vegetation, from 

 the level of the sea to the summits of the loftiest mountains. This is 

 the general rule. Sumatra, New Guinea, Borneo, the Philippines, and 

 the ""Moluccas, and the uncultivated parts of Java and Celebes, are all 

 forest countries, except a few small and unimportant tracts, due, per- 

 haps, in some cases, to ancient cultivation or accidental fires. To this, 

 however, there is one important exception in the island of Timor, and 

 all the smaller islands opposite, in which there is absolutely no Ibrest 

 such as exists in the other islands, and this character extends in a lesser 

 degree to Flores, Sumbawa, Lombock, and Bali. The changes of the 

 monsoons, and of the wet and dry seasons in some parts of the archi- 

 pelago are very puzzling ; and an accurate series of observations in 

 numerous localities is required to elucidate them. Speaking generally, 

 the whole southwestern part of the Archipelago, including the whole 



