368 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY, 



great storm, and about ten miles from this island lie encountered an 

 earthquake on the sea, followed by most frightful thunders and 

 cracklings, from which he imagined that an island, or else a piece of 

 the land, had burst up, and shortly thereafter, as they drew a little 

 closer with the ship to the land, and were come near to the mouth of 

 the Sunda Straits, it was evident that the Island of Cracketouw had 

 burst out ; and his conjecture was correct, for he and all the ship's 

 company perceived the strong sulphur-atmosphere, also the sea cov- 

 ered with pumice, . . . which they scooped up as curiosities." Save 

 for the observations of passing travelers, by whom the great beauty 

 of its tree-clad slopes, the first verdant spot to meet the eye after 

 weary weeks at sea, has been gratefully described, the volcano, after it 

 died out, has had an uneventful and unrecorded history. 



On the 20th of May last year, at half-past ten in the forenoon, the 

 inhabitants of Batavia were astounded by hearing a dull, booming 

 noise, whether proceeding from the air or from below was doubtful, 

 soon followed by the forcible drumming and rattling of all the doors 

 and windows in the place. The commotion was strongest between 

 half -past ten and one o'clock in the day, and between seven and eight 

 in the evening. About midday a curious circumstance was observed — 

 that in some spots in the city no vibrations were perceived, although 

 the surrounding buildings were experiencing them. It was at once 

 concluded that a volcanic eruption of an alarming character had taken 

 place, but for some time it was impossible to localize the direction of 

 the sounds, though the west was the quarter of the compass to which 

 most people assigned them. 



A report, issued next day by the director of the observatory in 

 Batavia, stated that, as he had no instruments for recording the in- 

 tensity and direction of earthquake-shocks, he could certify only that 

 no increase of earth magnetism accompanied the tremblings — the pho- 

 tographs indicating nothing abnormal ; and that the quivering was 

 absolutely vertical throughout the periods mentioned above ; for a 

 suspended magnet with an exact registering apparatus gave no indica- 

 tions of the slightest horizontal oscillations, but alone of vertical vibra- 

 tions. This was verified by the observations of one of the philosoph- 

 ical-instrument makers in the town on a pendulum in his shop, where 

 only vertical trillings were observable at a time when the windows 

 and glass doors of the house were rattling, just as if shaken by the 

 hand, in so violent a way that it was difiicult to carry on conversation. 

 Nowhere, however, do there seem to have been observed any shocks 

 of a true or undulatory earthquake. From midnight of the 20th 

 throughout the forenoon of the 21st the tremulations continued very 

 distinct. The same morning a thin sprinkling of ashes fell, " whence, 

 is not known," both at Telok-betong and at Scmangka, situated in 

 Sumatra at the bead of the Lampong and Semangka Bays respectively. 

 At Buitenzorg, thirty miles south of Batavia, the same phenomena 



