164 COMPENDIUM OF GEOGRAPHY AND TRAVEL 



minutes, increased in violence, until at night there was 

 an almost continuous roar. The sounds thus caused 

 were indescribable, as may indeed be easily conceived, 

 seeing that we have only the discharge of heavy cannon 

 or thunder to serve as means of comparison. By one 

 observer they were stated to resemble discharges of 

 artillery at every second of time, combined with a 

 crackling noise which was probably due to the collision 

 of the fragments of the ejecta. But at Buitenzorg, 100 

 miles distant, a similar comparison was used, and the 

 noise compared to the firing of a park of artillery close at 

 hand, — so violent, indeed, were the explosions that the 

 windows were blown in and sleep was rendered almost 

 impossible. 



Such were the phenomena witnessed by the onlookers 

 who escaped with their lives from the horrors of the night 

 of August 26 th. Precisely what occurred at the focus 

 of eruption will always remain a matter of doubt, but it is 

 probable that from long-continued eruptive action the lip 

 of the crater became gradually removed, and the sea 

 gained admission to the white-hot mass of lava in the 

 interior. The extraordinary violence of the explosions 

 may have been due to the immense amount of steam thus 

 generated, or the inrush of a vast body of water may have 

 had a merely mechanical action, blocking the vent like 

 the clods of earth thrown in to cause the eruption of a 

 geyser. It is not unlikely that the succession of smaller 

 seismic waves which left the island at various times during 

 the night of the 26 th, owed their origin to these causes, 

 but the great wave, which will be presently referred to, 

 and which was productive of the most wide-spread results, 

 is considered by most authorities to have been aided, if 

 not entirely caused, by some upheaval of the sea-bottom. 

 It is worthy of remark, however, that at no time and 



