110 
COMPENDIUM OF GEOGRAPHY AND TRAVEL 
is perfectly level, in one part sandy and barren, but else¬ 
where covered with prairie and other grasses, and from 
its centre rises a little group of small peaks. The chief 
of these (600 feet in height), known to the natives as 
Bromo (Brahma), is in a state of constant activity, and 
having been in past times a sacred mountain to those 
professing the Hindu religion, is still held in awe by the 
Javanese. Tenger is connected by a high ridge with 
Serneru, whose summit lies about eight miles south of it. 
The latter ejected in 1885 a stream of lava of considerable 
volume. 
Although the earthquakes occurring in Java are 
neither so frequent nor so terribly destructive as those of 
the Philippine Islands, they are nevertheless far from 
uncommon. The most celebrated is that of 5 th January 
1699, on the occasion of the eruption of Salak already 
referred to, when 208 considerable shocks were felt, and 
many houses in Batavia destroyed. Again, in 1867, a 
violent earthquake occurred in central Java, which caused 
great havoc and killed" numbers of people. In the 
capital of Jokjokarta alone a thousand are said to have 
perished. 
In a country so eminently volcanic as Java, the 
occurrence of the rarer phenomena owing their existence 
to the agency of volcanic forces might be expected, and 
accordingly we find not only an abundance of hot springs, 
solfataras, and the like, but various manifestations of the 
great subterranean fires which are not so frequently seen. 
The wondrous tales of the deadly “ Poison Valley ”—the 
celebrated Guwa Upas—have long ago been proved to be 
mythical, as has been already stated, but they may 
perhaps have been confused with hearsay accounts of 
Pajagalon, a valley near the lake of Talaga Bodas, where 
the ground emits carbonic acid gas in sufficient quantities 
