TRUE VOLCANOES. 283 



markable that, as the natives of the plateau of Quito had 

 guessed, before my measurement, that Chimborazo surpassed 

 all the other snowy mountains in the country, the Javanese 

 also knew that the Holy Mountain, Maha-Meru, which is but 

 at a short distance from the Gunung-Ardjuno (11,031 feet), 

 exhibited the maximum of elevation upon the island, and yet, 

 in this case, in a country free from snow, the greater dis- 

 tance of the summit from the level of the lower limit of per- 

 petual snow could no more serve as a guide to the judgment 

 than the height of an occasional temporary fall of snow.* 



The elevation of the Gunung Semeru, which exceeds 

 11,000 (11,726 English) feet, is most closely approached 

 by four other mountains, which were found hypsometrically 

 to be between ten and eleven thousand feet. These are: 

 Gunungl Slamat, or mountain of Tegal (11,116 feet), Gu- 

 nung Ardjuno (11,031 feet), Gunung Sumbing (11,029 feet), 

 and Gunung Lawu (10,726 feet). Seven other volcanoes 

 of Java attain a height of nine or ten thousand feet ; a re- 

 sult which is of the more importance as no summit of the 

 island was formerly supposed to rise higher than six thou- 

 sand feet.J Of the five groups of North and South Ameri- 



mira (a Sanscrit word for sea), see my Asie Centrale, t. i., p. 114-116 ; 

 and Lassen's Indische Altertlmmskunde, bd. i., s. 847. The latter is 

 inclined to regard the names as not of Sanscrit origin. 



* See page 229. 



f Gunung is the Javanese word for mountain, in Malayan, gunong, 

 which, singularly enough, is not farther disseminated over the enor- 

 mous domain of the Malayan language ; see the comparative table of 

 words in my brother's work upon the Kawi language, vol. ii., s. 249, 

 No. 62. As it is the custom to place this word gunung before the 

 names of mountains in Java, it is usually indicated in the text by a 

 simple G. 



J Leopold de Buch, Description Physique des lies Canaries, 1836, p. 

 419. Not only has Java (Junghubn, th. i., s. 61, and th. ii., s. 547) 

 a colossal mountain, the Semeru of 12,233 feet, which consequently 

 exceeds the peak of Teneriffe a little in height, but an elevation of 

 12,256 feet is also attributed to the Peak of Indrapura, in Sumatra, 

 which is also still active, but does not appear to have been so accu- 

 rately measured (th. i., s. 78, and profile Map No. 1). The next to 

 this in Sumatra, are the dome of Telaman, which is only one of the 

 summits of Ophir (not 13,834, but only 9603 feet in height), and the 

 Merapi (according to Dr. Horner, 9571 feet), the most active of the 

 thirteen volcanoes of Sumatra, which, however (th. ii., s. 294, and 

 Junghuhn's Battalander, 1847, th. i., s. 25), is not to be confounded, 

 from the similarity of the names, with two volcanoes of Java — the 

 celebrated Merapi near Jogjakerta (9208 feet), and the Merapi which 

 forms the eastern portion of the summit of the volcano Idjen (8595 

 feet). In the Merapi it is thought that the holy name JSIeru is again 

 to be detected, combined with the Malayan and Javanese word apt, fire. 



