10 VOLCANO 



grow, and forests and swamps of these useful trees 

 abound in all such situations : they give shelter to in- 

 numerable mosquitoes, which render it impossible to 

 sleep at night in their vicinity. 



Situated in the centre of islands, most of which 

 abound in volcanoes of the most frightful activity, one 

 would expect earthquakes and other indications of 

 their vicinity to be frequent in Borneo ; but as far as 

 has yet been discovered, no volcanoes or other indica- 

 tions of subterraneous fire are found, and if they ever 

 existed, it must have been at a period so remote that 

 even to tradition the remembrance of them is lost. 

 The Philippines to the north, and Java and other 

 islands to the south, are frequently disturbed by these 

 fearful phenomena, and I have seen many inhabitants 

 of the western coast of Borneo, who perfectly re- 

 collected the great eruption of the mountain Tomboro, 

 in the island of Sumbawa, which happened in April, 

 1815,* the effects of which are distinctly stated to 



* The following interesting account of this eruption, given by 

 Sir Stamford Raffles, is extracted from his excellent History of 

 Java : 



" In order to give the reader some idea of the tremendous vio- 

 lence with which nature sometimes distinguishes the operations 

 of the volcano in these regions, and enable him to form some con- 

 jecture, from the occurrences of recent experience, of the effects 

 they may have produced in past ages, a short account of the 

 extraordinary and wide spread phenomena that accompanied the 

 eruption of the Tomboro mountain, in the island of Sumbawa, in 

 April, 1815, may not be uninteresting. Almost every one is 

 acquainted with the intermitting convulsions of Etna andVesuvius, 

 as they appear in the descriptions of the poet and the authentic 



