730 ON THE VOLCANO OF TAAL, 



appalling jets of water and sand into the heavens began to come 

 closer and closer to the shores, the inhabitants fled into the hills. 

 After a second series of earthquakes a large portion of land near the 

 town of Sala was submerged beneath the lake, leaving nothing 

 visible but the tops of the trees. The force of the eruption 

 continued with all its primitive violence for three days, during 

 which time • the air was so darkened by ashes that the lamps had 

 to be lit by day in the houses. After the third day there was a 

 mitigation of the force of the eruption, which, however, continued 

 unusually active for three weeks, and then the crater was com- 

 paratively quiet for a while, but the volumes of smoke which came 

 forth from it were dense and unusual, and remained so for the 

 succeeding five years. 



Until 1754, the year of the great earthquake of Grand Cairo, 

 when half the houses and 40,000 people ai'e said to have been 

 swallowed up, Taal remained qviiet, but on the 13th of May of 

 that year it broke out again. This was the greatest eruption that 

 was ever known there. For seven months, or rather until the 1st 

 of December — that is 200 days — the fiery mountain was in awful 

 activity. Up to this time the settlements on the fertile slopes of 

 the lake-margins had not suffered much damage, that is until the 

 eruption of 1749, but now ruin and desolation spread over the 

 land with great loss of life. The towns of Sala, Lipa, Tamanan 

 and Taal, with their numerous and rich hamlets, were entirely 

 destroyed, while far and near devastation spread over to the most 

 remote portions of the province, such as Balayan, Bauan, Batangas, 

 Rosario, Santo Tomas and San Pablo. These regions, 1 can bear 

 testimony, may be called the garden of Luzon, and though they 

 have now recovered completely the effects of the catastrophe of 

 130 years ago, yet then it was said they were converted into a 

 desert. The principal violence of this eruption seemed to have 

 been confined to the ejection of enormous qiiantities of cinders, 

 which, so to speak, made the whole ground red hot, and repeated 

 the appeai-ances of torrents of fire. The easterly wind took these 

 over the hamlets and agricultural districts dependent upon the 

 towns of Taal and Tanauan, and completely destroyed them, not 



