20 



Verbeek, whose extraordinary merits in the domain of geology 

 I respectfully acknowledge, may of course not be considered an 

 authority in the domain of botany but yet I think he may be right 

 here. Treub's description of the situation seems to me to be mainly 

 correct, but only for so far as concerns part of the localities inves- 

 tigated. The lower parts of the island were really almost everywhere 

 covered with a very hot layer of pumice many meters thick, from 

 the deeply eroded ravines 1) of which, two months after the eruption, 

 hot water and steam emerged in several places. Verbeek who 

 visited Krakatao 5 times with short intervals (Oct. '83; Aug. '84; 

 Sept. '84; July '85; (uife '86) told me by letter: ,,Two months after 

 ,,the eruption the masses of pumice were still very hot; everywhere 

 ,,steam escaped from small crevices; the barefooted natives tripped 

 ,,when coming near or on such a crevice". Therefore it is highly 

 probable that in those lower parts of Krakatao which remained 

 deeply buried, the original vegetation was destroyed, partly by 

 suffocation, partly by the high temperature to which it was exposed 

 during a long time. As late as 1908 my companions and myself 2 ), 

 when visiting the lower localities on the southwestern side of the 

 island, got the impression that the vegetation, years before, had 

 been entirely destroyed. 



But we may ask: Did not Treub and the subsequent authors 

 generalize too much? Is it not possible that the higher areas, not 

 reached by Treub, differed from those beneath? 



In my opinion both questions have to be answered in the 

 affirmative. I have here in view especially the localities on the 

 south- and south-eastern slopes of the cone, upwards of 500 m. 

 above sea-level. By their situation (see map) they were protected 

 against the violence of the eruption; two weeks before the end 

 of the eruption they still bore a dense vegetation (Cf. p. 17) and 

 at the final catastrophe they were not covered with a thick layer 

 of coarse blocks of pumice as the areas beneath, but only with a 

 much thinner layer of ashes and fine grit 3 ). Near the top the layer 

 of eruptive products was even very thin 4 ). Two months after the 



!) Verbeek, Kort Verslag 15, Krakatau, Dutch Edition (1888) 302. 



2 ) jaarverslag van den Topographischen Dienst in Nederlandscli Indie (Year-book 

 of the Topographical Survey Service in the Dutch Indies) 1908, p. 189. 



:; l Verbeek, Krakatau, Dutch Edition (1888), p. 122. 



4 ) Verbeek, Krakatau, Dutch Edition (1888), p. 376. How firmly the fiction of a 

 total and very thick covering has rooted in the brains of scientists appears i.a. from 

 a communication of Dammerman [Treubia III (1923) p. 61] who, in spite of the 

 above-mentioned very clear statements by Verbeek, coveis the entire island with a 

 layer of hot ashes of 30 60 m . thickness. 



