THE VOLCANIC ERUPTION OF KRAKATAU. 373 



The material thrown out rose to an elevation which we have no 

 means of estimating, but so tremendous was it that on spreading itself 

 out it covered the whole western end of Java and the south of Su- 

 matra for hundreds of square miles with a pall of impenetrable dark- 

 ness. During this period abnormal atmospheric and magnetic displays 

 were observed ; compass-needles rotated violently, and the barometer 

 rose and fell many tenths of an inch in a minute. Following at no 

 great interval, and somewhere between ten and twelve o'clock in the 

 forenoon of the same day, either by successive rapid outbursts or by 

 one single supreme convulsion, the subterranean powers burst their 

 prison-walls with a detonation so terrific as to have been, as it seems, 

 inaudible from its very immensity to human ears in its close vicinity, 

 but which spread consternation and alarm among the dwellers within 

 a circle whose diameter lay across nearly three thousand miles, or fifty 

 degrees of longitude. 



With sunrise on the 28th the dense curtain which had enveloped 

 so wide an area in darkness gradually began to clear off, and the light 

 broke on a scene of devastation of the saddest kind, but on one of 

 comparative placidity, as if Nature lay exhausted after her frantic par- 

 oxysm. Krakatau was seen reduced to a fraction of its original size ; 

 the whole of the northern portion, with the height in front of which 

 the volcano first broke out, and half of the peak itself, had vanished 

 (see the accompanying map). To the northward, however, two new 

 pieces of land, which have received the names of Steers and Calmeyer 

 Islands, raised their tops above the surface of the sea, where the morn- 

 ing previous thirty to forty fathoms of water had existed. Of the 

 two islets on each side of Krakatau, Lang Island is left practically 

 unaltered, while Verlaten Island seems elevated somewhat, and is re- 

 ported to be in eruption. But, where the volcano had been so active 

 a few hours before, a sea fathomless with a line of a thousand feet is 

 now to be found. 



Having thus followed the succession of events, there remains little 

 doubt that the crater on the 26th of August by its constant action had 

 either cleared out the old funnel into its submerged portion, or that a 

 rent by subsidence or otherwise was formed, through which a volume 

 of water was admitted to the heated interior, resulting in explosion 

 after explosion in increasing violence, as more material for generating 

 steam was finding its way into the underground recesses. 



The first great waves on the evening of the 26th and the early 

 part of the 27th were probably caused by a portion of Krakatau being 

 shot out northward for eight miles and dropped where we have now 

 Steers Island ; while the appalling detonation in that forenoon and 

 the greater wave accompanying it resulted perhaps from that still 

 more Titanic effort which lifted the greater portion of Krakatau — 

 several thousand million cubic yards of material — out by its one hun- 

 dred and seventy fathom root, hurled it through the air over Lang 



