AUSTRALASIA. 



canic chain is continued by Mount Tangka (3,460 feet), round Lampong Bay to the 

 south-eastern headland of Sumatra, and thence through a line of islets and reefs 

 across the Sunda Strait, here only sixteen miles wide, to the opposite coast of Java. 

 The extinct cone of Raja Bassa (4,460 feet), southernmost member of the chain 

 of sixty-six Suraatran volcanoes, does not lie in the normal direction of the main 

 axis, and seems to have originally stood on an island afterwards attached to the 

 mainland, either by upheaval or more probably by a shower of scoriae and ashes. 

 E-aja Bassa forms part of a transverse volcanic ridge, whose axis intersects that of 



Kg. 29. — Krakatau and Neighboueing Islets before the Eruption. 

 Scale 1 : 150,000. 



01» 160 

 Feet. 



Depths. 



160 to 320 

 Feet. 



320 Feet and 

 upward.s. 



- 3} Miles 



the Sumatran system, for it runs in the direction from north-east to south-west. 

 To this scarcely perceptible ridge belong the two islands of Sebesi and Krakatau 

 in the Sunda Strait, and the system is also perhaps continued under the Indian 

 Ocean for some six hundred miles to the Keeling Islands, which lie in a direct line 

 with Baja Bassa and Krakatau. 



But yet another volcanic fault intersects that of Sumatra and Krakatau in the 

 Sunda Strait. This is the great Javanese system, running due west and east, and 

 marked by so many formidable igneous cones. Thus at this focus of underground 

 forces the terrestrial crust is, so to say, starred with tremendous fissures, and here 

 the destructive agencies have at times, and even quite recently, assumed a character 

 of stupendous grandeur. 



