372 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



ascending ejecta, vainly trying to break, were constantly sucked back 

 and borne upward round and round in the center of its Stygian coils. 

 The trees which once clothed this portion of the island presented only 

 bare stems from which their crowns had disappeared, evidently not by 

 fire, for there was no charring visible on them, but rather as if wrenched 

 off by a whirlwind — perhaps of the crater itself. 



After the 28th, curiosity in these volcanic phenomena seems to have 

 abated, and during the next eight or nine weeks, though the eruption 

 continued with great vigor, little is recorded of its progress ; indeed, 

 so comjiletely did it seem to have been forgotten, that visitors to 

 Batavia, unless they had made inquiries, might have failed to hear of 

 its existence at all. During this period no local disturbances to attract 

 attention or to cause the least alarm are recorded. From the logs of 

 ships in the neighborhood of the straits, about the middle of August, 

 numerous extracts have been published ; but many of them show that 

 they have been written either with the mind bewildered and confused 

 by the terrifying incidents amid which the officers found themselves, 

 or from the after-recollection of the events, of which under such con- 

 ditions the important dry facts of time, place, and succession, are liable 

 to be unconsciously misstated. Much is therefore lost which might 

 have been known ; but a few are of the utmost value. 



On the 21st of August the volcano appears to have been in in- 

 creased activity ; for the shij^ Bay of Naples reports being unable to 

 venture into the straits on account of the great fall of pumice and 

 ashes. 



The first, however, of the more disastrous effects were experienced 

 on the evening of the 26th, commencing about four o'clock in the 

 afternoon. They were inaugurated by violent explosions heard in 

 Anjer, Telok-betong, and as far as Batavia, accompanied by high 

 waves, which after first retreating rolled upon both sides of the 

 straits, causing much damage to the villages there, and were followed 

 by a night of unusually pitchy darkness. These horrors continued all 

 night with increasing violence, till midnight, when they were aug- 

 mented by electrical phenomena on a terrifying scale, which envel- 

 oped not only the ships in the vicinity but embraced those at a dis- 

 tance of even ten to a dozen miles. As the lurid gleams that played 

 on the gigantic column of smoke and ashes were seen in Batavia, 

 eighty miles off in a straight line, we can form some idea of the great 

 height to which the debris, some of which fell as fine ashes in Cheribon, 

 five hundred miles to the east, was being ejected during the night. 



Between five and seven o'clock (for the hour is uncertain) in the 

 morning of the 27th, there was a still more gigantic explosion, heard 

 in the Andaman Islands and in India, which produced along both 

 shores of the strait an immense tidal movement, first of recession and 

 then of unwonted rise, occasioning that calamitous loss of life of 

 which we have all heard. 



