Before the year 1883 physical geographers, in speaking of the most
disastrous volcanic eruption on record, referred first, in point of
time, to the celebrated eruption of Vesuvius, in A.D. 79, when the
cities of Herculaneum, Pompeii and several smaller towns on the slope
of the mountain were destroyed by lava or buried under a mass of
pumice stones and ashes; second to that of Hecla and Skaptar Jokull,
contiguous mountains in Iceland, in 1783, when two enormous lava
streams, one 15 miles wide and over 100 ft. deep and the other
scarcely inferior, flowed, the first, 50 miles and the other 40, till
they reached the sea, pouring a flood of white hot lava into the
ocean, destroying everything in their paths and killing in the waters
of the ocean the fish, the mainstay of the inhabitants, who were
reduced by the disaster, directly or indirectly, to less than
five-sixths of their former strength; and third to that of Galungung,
in 1822, which devastated such an immense area in Java; but all the
eruptions known besides were as mere child's play to the terrible one
of Krakatoa in 1883.
If the reader will examine the map of the East Indies he will find
represented in the straits of Sunda, which lie between Sumatra and
Java, the little island of Krakatoa. In maps made before 1883 he will
hunt in vain for the name, for like Bull Run before 1861, it was then
unknown to fame, though navigators who passed through the straits knew
it as a beautiful tropical isle, with an extinct volcanic cone in the
center. In the beginning of 1883, however, the little well behaved
island showed symptoms of wrath that boded no good to the larger
islands in the vicinity. Noted for the fine fruits with which it
abounded, it was a famous picnic ground for towns and cities even 100
miles away, and when the subterranean rumblings and mutterings of
wrath became conspicuous the people of the capital of Java, Batavia,
put a steamboat into requisition and visited the island in large
numbers. For a time the island was constantly in a slight tremor, and
the subterranean roar was like the continued but distant mutterings of
thunder, but the crisis was reached August 23, at 10 o'clock A.M. It
was a beautiful Sunday morning and the waters of the straits of Sunda
were like that sea of glass, as clear as crystal, of which John in his
apocalyptic vision speaks. The beauty that morning was enhanced by the
extraordinary transparency of the tropical air, for distant mountain
ranges seemed so near that it seemed possible to strike them with a
stone cast from the hand. Only the mysterious rumblings and mutterings
of the pent up forces beneath the island disturbed the breathless calm
and silence that lay on nature--the calm before the terrible
storm--the mightiest, the most awful on record! It burst forth! Sudden
night snatched away day from the eyes of the terrified beholders on
the mainland, but the vivid play of lightnings around the ascending
column of dust penetrated even the deep obscurity to a distance of 80
miles. This awful darkness stretched within a circle whose diameter
was 400 miles, while more or less darkness reigned within a circle
with a diameter three times as great. Within this latter area dust
fell like snow from the sky, breaking off limbs of trees by its weight
miles distant, while in Batavia, 100 miles away from the scene of the
disaster, it fell to the depth of several inches. The explosions were
so loud as to be distinctly heard in Hindostan, 1,800 miles away, and
at Batavia the sound was like the constant roar of cannon in a field
of battle. Finally the whole island was blown to pieces, and now came
the most awful contest of nature--a battle of death between Neptune
and Vulcan; the sea poured down into the chasm millions of tons, only
to be at first converted into vapor by the millions of tons of
seething white hot lava beneath. Over the shores 30 miles away, waves
over 100 ft. high rolled with such a fury that everything, even to a
part of the bedrock, was swept away. Blocks of stone, of 50 tons
weight were carried two miles inland. On the Sumatra side of the
straits a large vessel was carried three miles inland. The wave, of
course growing less in intensity, traveled across the whole Indian
Ocean, 5,000 miles, to the Cape of Good Hope and around it into the
Atlantic. The waves in the atmosphere traveled around the globe three
times at the rate of 700 miles per hour. The dust from the volcano was
carried up into the atmosphere fully twenty miles and the finest of it
was distributed through the whole body of air. The reader doubtless
remembers the beautiful reddish or purple glow at sunrise and sunset
for fully six months after August, 1883--that glow was caused by
volcanic dust in the atmosphere interfering with the passage of the
sun's rays of the upper part of the solar spectrum, more manifest at
sun rising and setting than at other times during the day, because at
these periods the sun's rays have to travel obliquely through the
atmosphere, and consequently penetrating a very deep layer, were
deprived of all their colors except the red.
The loss of life was appalling. The last sight on earth to 35,000
people was that of the awful eruption. Engulfed in the ocean or
covered with heaps of ashes, a few hours after the eruption commenced
the awful work was done, and that vast multitude had vanished from off
the face of the earth. The fact that in the neighborhood of the
mountain there was a sparse population accounts for there not being
even a far greater loss of life.
Notwithstanding the awfulness of volcanic and earthquake phenomena,
there is some silver lining to the dark clouds. They prove that the
earth is yet a _living_ planet. Centuries must pass away before it
will become like the moon--a dead planet--without water, air or life.
Our satellite is a prophecy indeed of what the earth must eventually
become when all its life forces, its internal energies, are dissipated
into space.--_Granville F. Foster, Min. Sci. Press_.
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