A LARGE CRATER. 
343 
Six days later, after walking many miles along roads which 
were often nearly a foot deep in mnd, subsisting mostly on a 
poor vegetable diet, sleeping continually in our top-coats, caps, 
and all the clothes we could command, and experiencing snow, 
and rain, and hail, we were once more back enjoying the 
luxuries of Nagasaki. 
Now, how does the crater of Asosan compare with other 
craters in the world P Amongst those which are active it 
appears to be the largest which has hitherto been discovered, 
and even if we include those which are extinct, it: appears to 
take the foremost place. 
Scope, in his valuable work on Volcanoes, amongst other 
remarkable craters, speaks of the following : — 
In St. Helena there is ‘ a trachytic volcano encircled by a 
broken ring of basalt, the area of which measures eight miles 
by four . 5 
In the Mauritius there is a crater the shortest diameter of 
which is thirteen miles. 
In St. Jago (Cape de Verde Isles) there is a similar crater. 
The Cirque of Teneriffe is eight miles by six. 
Pantellaria (near Sicily) has traces of a crater twelve miles 
in diameter. The rock is trachytic. 
Bolsena (an oval lake basin), twelve miles in diameter. 
Papandayang (Java), here there is a hollow fifteen miles by 
six, supposed to have been formed by the blowing off of the 
entire summit of a mountain by long-continued explosions. 
Bromo (in Java) is a crater' four or five miles in diameter, 
with perpendicular sides a thousand feet in height. 
Another point of interest about a mountain like Asosan, and 
one which would form food for the speculation of almost every 
visitor, is the question as to how such a crater has been formed. 
If I read Mr. Scrope aright, I must imagine that over this 
crater there was once a volcano, the upper portion of which, by 
a series of violent explosions, has been blown to atoms. In 
many cases the origin of craters in a manner like this is no 
doubt true, and this I may say, not because I should myself 
have imagined it, but because competent witnesses have seen 
the operation actually performed. In certain cases, however, 
and certainly in the case of a crater like that which we see at 
Asosan, I should be inclined to modify the suggestion of such 
paroxysmal causes and adopt something more gentle, and which 
to me seems more in accordance with the facts. 
If from the heights and distances which I have given we 
make a drawing of Asosan, it will be found that the average slopes 
in the outside of the large crater must be about six degrees, and 
if we were to continue this slope upwards, we obtain a repre- 
sentation of the portion which, if it ever existed, has been 
