IN SUMATRA. 



211 



every pasf5iBg cloud. We had mt thus for perhaps ten to 

 twelve minutes when I noted that the centre of the white basin 

 had become intensely black, and score)! with durk streaks. 

 This area gradually increased. By steady scrutiny with my 

 gliiss, lor it was difficult to make out what m\s silently 

 and slowly transpiring, I at last discovered that the black- 

 ness inarked the sides of a chasm that had formed in — what I 

 now pe?reeived the white burnished mirror to be^ — a lake of 

 seething mud. The blackness increased. The lake was being 

 engulplied I A few minutes later a dull sullen roar was heard, 

 and I luid just time to conjecture within myself whence it 

 proceeded, when the whole lake heaved, and rose in the air for 

 some hundreds of feet, not as if violently ejected, but with 

 calm majestic upheaval ; and then fell back on itself with an 

 awesome roar, which reverberated round and round the vast 

 cauldron, and echoed from rocky wall to rocky wall like the 

 surge of an angry sea; and the immense volume of steam, let 

 loose from its prison-house, dissipated itself into the air. The 

 wave circles died away on the margin of the lake, which 

 resumed its burnished face and again reflected the blue sky ; 

 and silence reigned again until the geyser had gathered force 

 for another expiration. The roar of the coming explosion was 

 so awesome tliat such of ray porters who had followed me, and 

 had never been to the top before, looked the picture of terror ; 

 and when the lake rose they took to their heels and fled in a 

 btidy. Thus all day long the lake was swallowed up and 

 vomitetl forth, once in every fifteen to twenty minutes. That 

 it was not always so quiet even as now, the stones on the Sawah 

 and the seorite on the sides of the cone testified. Once in about 

 every three years, and m soma decades oftener, the natives 

 told me, the crops of coffee, bananas and rice were quite 

 destroyed by sulphur-rain/' which covered everything for 

 miles round the crater. 



On its eastern side, where the rim rises to its highest eleva- 

 tion, 1 made a hypsometrical observation ; but it required all 

 my endurance to complete it, for, though a cold wind was 

 blowing and the thermometer registered only 63" F., the 

 sun's rays seemed to possess more than their ordinary power. 

 I could feel, with acute pain, my hands, face and neck being 

 scorcbetl the moment they came into the sunshine. I sue- 



r 2 



