48 TRAVELS IN THE EAST INDIAN ARCHIPELAGO. 



t]iin and fibrous cumuli covered tlie other lofty peaks, 

 but a thick cloud wrapped itself around the crest of 

 this mountain and many small ones gathered on its 

 dark sides, which occasionally could be seen through 

 the partings in its white fleecy shroud. The form 

 of the whole was just that of the mountain, except at 

 its top, where for a time the clouds rose like a gigan- 

 tic, circular castle, the square openings in their dense 

 mass exactly resembling the windows in such thick 

 walls. 



Eastward of Ungarung are seen the lofty summits 

 of Merbabu and Meraj)i, and east from the anchorage 

 rises Mount Japara, forming, with the low lands at 

 its feet, almost an island, on Java's north coast. 



Like Batavia, Samarang is situated on both sides 

 of a small river, in a low morass. The river was 

 much swollen by late rains, and in the short time I 

 passed along it, I saw dead horses, cats, dogs, and 

 monkeys borne on its muddy waters out to the bay, 

 there perhaps to sink and be covered with layers of 

 mud, and, if after long ages those strata should be 

 elevated abo^e the level of the sea and fall under 

 a geologist's eye, to become the subject of some prolix 

 disquisition. This is, in fact, exactly the way that most 

 of the land animals in the marine deposits of former 

 times have come down to us — an extremely frag- 

 mentary history at best, yet sufficient to give us some 

 idea of the strange denizens of the earth when few or 

 none of the highest mountains had yet been formed. 



Through this low morass they are now digging a 

 canal out to the roads, so that the city may be ap- 

 proached from the anchorage by the canal and the 



