BBUPnON OF MOtWT GALUNGGONG. 



75 



immense quantity of scoriae and ashes, that Dr. 

 Jungliuhn thinks a layer nearly fifty feet thick was 

 spread over an area within a radixis of seven milea ; 

 and yet all this was thrown out diinng a single 

 night. Forty native villages were buried beneath it, 

 and about tlu'ee thousand souls are supposed to have 

 perished between this single setting and rising of the 

 sun. Dr. Horsfield, who drew up an account of this 

 tenible phenomenon from the stories of the natives, 

 mongly supposed that " an extent of ground, of the 

 mountain and its environs, fifteen miles long, and 

 full six broad, was by this commotion swallowed up 

 witMn the boweln of the earthJ' 



On the 8th of July, 1822, Mount Galunggong, an 

 old volcano, but a few milea noi-tlieast of Papanda- 

 yang, suffered a far more terrible and destructive 

 eiTiption. At noon on that day not a cloud could be 

 seen in the sky. The wild beasts gladly sought 

 the friendly shades of the dense forest ; the hum of 

 myi*iads of insects was hushed, and not a sound was 

 to be heard over the highly^ultivated declivities of 

 this mountain, or over the rich adjoining plain, but 

 the dull creakiug of some native cart drawn by the 

 sluggish buffalo. The natives, under shelter of their 

 i-ude huts, were giving themselves up to indolent 

 repose, when suddenly a frightful thundering was 

 heard in the earth ; and fi'om the top of this old vol- 

 cano a dark, dense mass was seen rising higher and 

 higher into the air, and spreading itself out over the 

 clear sky with such an appalling rapidity that in a 

 few moments the whole landscape was shrouded in 

 the darkness of night. 



