THE VOLCANIC ERUPTION OF KRAKATAU. 371 



islands about the third week of May, no intelligence has yet reached 

 this country. We know, from what occurred at Graham's Island, that 

 pumice ejected from the sea-bottom rises to the surface, and an exam- 

 ination of the chart of the currents in the Indian Ocean at once 

 shows that any flotsam in the region between west and south of Java 

 Head in that longitude could be drifted to the locality in which it 

 was observed in the month of July. If such a submarine outburst did 

 take place, Mr. Forbes suggested that somehow the orifice very soon 

 became blocked after a great in-rush of water had taken place, which, 

 becoming transformed into steam under enormous pressure, shaped its 

 course for the nearest old earth-scar, and found vent in Krakatau, by 

 an offshoot probably of the funnel of the eruption of 1680. That such 

 large lumps of pumice should be carried seven hundred miles west- 

 ward into the Indian Ocean does not seem probable, and is not sup- 

 ported by any observations. The earlier outbursts were not of very 

 unwonted vigor, for no pieces of any size are reported to have fallen 

 on the neighboring coasts of Java and Sumatra ; even after those of 

 August, no ship farther off than one hundred miles speaks of the fall 

 of any but the " finest dust and sand." 



On the 23d of May, a ship encountered at Flat Cape, in Sumatra, a 

 large amount of pumice on the sea, which increased in amount as Kra- 

 katau was neared. Of the appearance of the volcano on the 2Tth, we 

 have a graphic account in the " Algemeen Dagblad " newspaper, of 

 Batavia, by one of a party that ascended to the crater on that day. 

 As they approached the scene, the neighboring islands had the appear- 

 ance of being covered with snow. The crater was seen to be situated 

 not on the peak, but in a hollow of the ground, which lay from south- 

 east to northwest, sloping toward the north point, in front and to the 

 north side of the lower summit, looking toward Yerlaten Island. Both 

 heights were seen ; the southerly green, and the more northerly and 

 much lower one quite covered with dust and ashes. The volcano was 

 ejecting, with a great noise, masses of pumice, molten stone, and volumes 

 of steam and smoke, part of which was being carried away westward 

 by the monsoon wind, dropping all round and close at hand its larger 

 pieces, while a higher rising cloud is specially recorded as driving 

 away eastward, having evidently encountered a current in that direc- 

 tion in the upper air. Some of this dust-cloud was carried far to the 

 eastward, for Mr. Forbes relates that on the morning of the 24th of 

 May, when in the Island of Timor, twelve hundred miles distant, he 

 observed on the veranda of his hut, situated high in the hills behind 

 Dilly, a sprinkling of small particles of a grayish cinder, to which his 

 attention was more particularly drawn later on that and the next 

 day by their repeated falling with a sudden pat on the page before 

 him. The visitors to the crater seemed to have viewed with most 

 amazement the grandeur of the smoke-column whirling upward with 

 a terrific roar like a gigantic whirlwind, through whose sides. the 



