36 ABOUT VOLCANOS AND EARTHQUAKES. 



an hour. No explosions were heard till the whirlwind 

 had ceased at about eleven P.M. From midnight till the 

 evening of the nth, they continued without intermis- 

 sion ; after that time their violence moderated, and they 

 were heard only at intervals : but the explosions did not 

 cease entirely until the i5th of July. Of all the villages 

 round Tomboro, Tempo, containing about forty inhabit- 

 ants, is the only one remaining. In Pekate' no vestige 

 of a house is left ; twenty-six of the people, who were at 

 Sumbawa at the time, are the whole of the population 

 who have escaped. From the best inquiries, there were 

 certainly not fewer than 12,000 individuals in Tomboro 

 and Pekate' at the time of the eruption, of whom five or 

 six survive. The trees and herbage of every description, 

 along the whole of the north and west of the peninsula, 

 have been completely destroyed, with the exception of a 

 high point of land near the spot where the village of 

 Tomboro stood. At Sang'ir, it is added, the famine 

 occasioned by this event was so extreme, that one of 

 the rajah's own daughters died of starvation." 



(47.) I have seen it computed that the quantity of 

 ashes and lava vomited forth in this awful eruption 

 would have formed three mountains the size of Mont 

 Blanc, the highest of the Alps ; and if spread over the 

 surface of Germany, would have covered the whole of 

 it two feet deep ! The ashes did actually cover the 

 whole island of Tombock, more than 100 miles distant, 

 to that depth, and 44,000 persons there perished by 

 starvation, from the total destruction of all vegetation. 



(48.) The mountain Kirauiah in the island of Owyhee, 



