JAVA 107 



and 4000 people were destroyed. The eruptions of 

 Guntur — " tlie mountain of thunder " — are innumerable. 

 It is bare from base to summit, and although history 

 does not show it to have been so destructive to human 

 life as many other volcanoes of the island, it has never- 

 theless ruined the coffee-plantations around it on many 

 occasions. 



Terrible in their effects as have been many of the 

 eruptions of the volcanoes of Java, few have been so 

 disastrous as that of Mount Galunggung, a peak some 

 few miles north-east of Papandayang. At noon on the 

 8th October, 1822, not a cloud was to be seen in the 

 sky, and no preliminary earthquake or noises within the 

 mountain gave warning of what was about to occur. 

 Suddenly a frightful thundering was heard, and from the 

 top of this apparently extinct volcano a dark dense mass 

 was seen rising higher and higher into the air, and 

 spreading itself out over the clear sky with such appalling 

 rapidity that in a few moments the whole landscape was 

 shrouded in the darkness of night. Through the thick 

 darkness flashes of lightning gleamed incessantly in every 

 direction, and many natives were instantly struck down to 

 the earth by stones falling from the sky. Then a deluge 

 of hot water and flowing mud shot up from the crater 

 like a waterspout, and poured down the mountain-sides, 

 sweeping away trees and beasts and human beings in its 

 seething mass. At the same moment stones and ashes 

 and sand were projected to an enormous height into the 

 air, and, as they fell, destroyed nearly everything within 

 a radius of twenty miles, while quantities of the ejecta 

 fell even beyond the Eiver Tandoi, which is forty 

 miles off. A few villages that were situated on high 

 hills on the lower declivities of the mountain escaped the 

 surrounding destruction by being raised above the streams 



