8 THE MALAY ARCHIPELAGO. [chap. i. 



pletely altering the appearance of the mountain, destroying 

 the greater part of the inhabitants, and sending forth such 

 volumes of ashes as to darken the air at Ternate, forty 

 miles off, and to almost entirely destroy the growing crops 

 on that and the surrounding islands. 



The island of Java contains more volcanoes, active and 

 extinct, than any other known district of equal extent. 

 They are about forty-five in number, and many of them 

 exhibit most beautiful examples of the volcanic cone on a 

 large scale, single or double, with entire or truncated 

 summits, and averaging 10,000 feet high. 



It is now well ascertained that almost all volcanoes 

 have been slowly built up by the accumidation of matter 

 — mud, ashes, and lava — ejected by themselves. The 

 openings or craters, however, frequently shift their posi- 

 tion; so that a country may be covered with a more or 

 less irregular series of hills in chains and masses, only 

 here and there rising into lofty cones, and yet the whole 

 may be produced by true volcanic action. In this manner 

 the greater part of Java has been formed. There has been 

 some elevation, especially on the south coast, where ex- 

 tensive cliffs of coral limestone are found ; and there may 

 be a substratum of older stratified rocks; but still essentially 

 Java is volcanic ; and that noble and fertile island — the 

 very garden of the East, and perhaps upon the whole the 

 richest, the best cultivated, and the best governed tropical 



