TELLS CHIEFLY OF THE WONDERFUL EFFECTS OF THIS ERUPTION ON THE WORLD AT
LARGE.
The great explosions of that morning had done more damage and had
achieved results more astounding than lies in the power of language
adequately to describe, or of history to parallel.
Let us take a glance at this subject in passing.
An inhabitant of Anjer--owner of a hotel, a ship-chandler's store, two
houses, and a dozen boats--went down to the beach about six on the
morning of that fateful 27th of August. He had naturally been impressed
by the night of the 26th, though, accustomed as he was to volcanic
eruptions, he felt no apprehensions as to the safety of the town. He
went to look to the moorings of his boats, leaving his family of seven
behind him. While engaged in this work he observed a wave of immense
size approaching. He leaped into one of his boats, which was caught up
by the wave and swept inland, carrying its owner there in safety. But
this was the wave that sealed the doom of the town and most of its
inhabitants, including the hotel-keeper's family and all that he
possessed.
This is one only out of thousands of cases of bereavement and
destruction.
A lighthouse-keeper was seated in his solitary watch-tower, speculating,
doubtless, on the probable continuance of such a violent outbreak, while
his family and mates--accustomed to sleep in the midst of elemental
war--were resting peacefully in the rooms below, when one of the mighty
waves suddenly appeared, thundered past, and swept the lighthouse with
all its inhabitants away.
This shows but one of the many disasters to lighthouses in Sunda
Straits.
A Dutch man-of-war--the _Berouw_--was lying at anchor in Lampong Bay,
fifty miles from Krakatoa. The great wave came, tore it from its
anchorage, and carried it--like the vessel of our friend David Roy--
nearly two miles inland! Masses of coral of immense size and weight
were carried four miles inland by the same wave. The river at Anjer was
choked up; the conduit which used to carry water into the place was
destroyed, and the town itself was laid in ruins.
But these are only a few of the incidents of the great catastrophe. Who
can conceive, much less tell of, those terrible details of sudden death
and disaster to thousands of human beings, resulting from an eruption
which destroyed towns like Telok Betong, Anjer, Tyringin, etcetera,
besides numerous villages and hamlets on the shores of Java and Sumatra,
and caused the destruction of more than 36,000 souls?
But it is to results of a very different kind, and on a much more
extended scale, that we must turn if we would properly estimate the
magnitude, the wide-spreading and far-reaching influences, and the
extraordinary character, of the Krakatoa outburst of 1883.
In the first place, it is a fact, testified to by some of the best-known
men of science, that the shock of the explosion extended _appreciably_
right round the world, and seventeen miles, (some say even higher!) up
into the heavens.
Mr Verbeek, in his treatise on this subject, estimates that a cubic
mile of Krakatoa was propelled in the form of the finest dust into the
higher regions of the atmosphere--probably about thirty miles! The dust
thus sent into the sky was of "ultra-microscopic fineness," and it
travelled round and round the world in a westerly direction, producing
those extraordinary sunsets and gorgeous effects and afterglows which
became visible in the British Isles in the month of November following
the eruption; and the mighty waves which caused such destruction in the
vicinity of Sunda Straits travelled--not once, but at least--six times
round the globe, as was proved by trustworthy and independent
observations of tide-gauges and barometers made and recorded at the same
time in nearly all lands--including our own.
Other volcanoes, it is said by those who have a right to speak in regard
to such matters, have ejected more "stuff," but not one has equalled
Krakatoa in the intensity of its explosions, the appalling results of
the sea-waves, the wonderful effects in the sky, and the almost
miraculous nature of the sounds.
Seated on a log under a palm-tree in Batavia, on that momentous morning
of the 27th, was a sailor who had been left behind sick by Captain Roy
when he went on his rather Quixotic trip to the Keeling Islands. He was
a somewhat delicate son of the sea. Want of self-restraint was his
complaint--leading to a surfeit of fruit and other things, which
terminated in a severe fit of indigestion and indisposition to life in
general. He was smoking--that being a sovereign and infallible cure for
indigestion and all other ills that flesh is heir to, as every one
knows!
"I say, old man," he inquired, with that cheerful tone and air which
usually accompanies incapacity for food. "Do it always rain ashes
here?"
The old man whom he addressed was a veteran Malay seaman.
"No," replied the Malay, "sometimes it rain mud--hot mud."
"Do it? Oh! well--anything for variety, I s'pose," returned the sailor,
with a growl which had reference to internal disarrangements.
"Is it often as dark as this in the daytime, an' is the sun usually
green?" he asked carelessly, more for the sake of distracting the mind
from other matters than for the desire of knowledge.
"Sometime it's more darker," replied the old man. "I've seed it so dark
that you couldn't see how awful dark it was."
As he spoke, a sound that has been described by ear-witnesses as
"deafening," smote upon their tympanums, the log on which they sat
quivered, the earth seemed to tremble, and several dishes in a
neighbouring hut were thrown down and broken.
"I say, old man, suthin' busted there," remarked the sailor, taking the
pipe from his mouth and quietly ramming its contents down with the end
of his blunt forefinger.
The Malay looked grave.
"The gasometer?" suggested the sailor.
"No, that _never_ busts."
"A noo mountain come into action, p'raps, an blow'd its top _off_?"
"Shouldn't wonder if that's it--close at hand too. We's used to that
here. But them's bigger cracks than or'nar'."
The old Malay was right as to the cause, but wrong as to distance.
Instead of being a volcano "close at hand," it was Krakatoa eviscerating
itself a hundred miles off, and the sound of its last grand effort
"extended over 50 degrees, equal to about 3000 miles."
On that day all the gas lights were extinguished in Batavia, and the
pictures rattled on the walls as though from the action of an
earthquake. But there was no earthquake. It was the air-wave from
Krakatoa, and the noise produced by the air-waves that followed was
described as "deafening."
The effect of the sounds of the explosions on the Straits Settlements
generally was not only striking but to some extent amusing. At Carimon,
in Java--355 miles distant from Krakatoa--it was supposed that a vessel
in distress was firing guns, and several native boats were sent off to
render assistance, but no distressed vessel was to be found! At Acheen,
in Sumatra--1073 miles distant--they supposed that a fort was being
attacked and the troops were turned out under arms. At Singapore--522
miles off--they fancied that the detonations came from a vessel in
distress and two steamers were despatched to search for it. And here
the effect on the telephone, extending to Ishore, was remarkable. On
raising the tubes a perfect roar as of a waterfall was heard. By
shouting at the top of his voice, the clerk at one end could make the
clerk at the other end hear, but he could not render a word
intelligible. At Perak--770 miles off--the sounds were thought to be
distant salvos of artillery, and Commander the Honourable F Vereker,
R.N., of H.M.S. _Magpie_, when 1227 miles distant, (in latitude 5
degrees 52 minutes North, longitude 118 degrees 22 minutes East), states
that the detonations of Krakatoa were distinctly heard by those on board
his ship, and by the inhabitants of the coast as far as Banguey Island,
on August 27th. He adds that they resembled distant heavy cannonading.
In a letter from Saint Lucia Bay--1116 miles distant--it was stated that
the eruption was plainly heard all over Borneo. A government steamer
was sent out from the Island of Timor--1351 miles off--to ascertain the
cause of the disturbance! In South Australia also, at places 2250 miles
away, explosions were heard on the 26th and 27th which "awakened"
people, and were thought worthy of being recorded and reported. From
Tavoy, in Burmah--1478 miles away--the report came--"All day on August
27th unusual sounds were heard, resembling the boom of guns. Thinking
there might be a wreck or a ship in distress, the Tavoy Superintendent
sent out the police launch, but they `could see nothing.'" And so on,
far and near, similar records were made, the most distant spot where the
sounds were reported to have been heard being Rodriguez, in the Pacific,
nearly 3000 miles distant!
One peculiar feature of the records is that some ships in the immediate
neighbourhood of Krakatoa did not experience the shock in proportionate
severity. Probably this was owing to their being so near that a great
part of the concussion and sound flew over them--somewhat in the same
way that the pieces of a bomb-shell fly over men who, being too near to
escape by running, escape by flinging themselves flat on the ground.
Each air-wave which conveyed these sounds, commencing at Krakatoa as a
centre, spread out in an ever-increasing circle till it reached a
distance of 180 degrees from its origin and encircled the earth at its
widest part, after which it continued to advance in a contracting form
until it reached the antipodes of the volcano; whence it was reflected
or reproduced and travelled back again to Krakatoa. Here it was turned
right-about-face and again despatched on its long journey. In this way
it oscillated backward and forward not fewer than six times before
traces of it were lost. We say "traces," because these remarkable facts
were ascertained, tracked, and corroborated by independent barometric
observation in all parts of the earth.
For instance, the passage of the great air-wave from Krakatoa to its
antipodes, and from its antipodes back to Krakatoa, was registered six
times by the automatic barometer at Greenwich. The instrument at Kew
Observatory confirmed the records of Greenwich, and so did the
barometers of other places in the kingdom. Everywhere in Europe also
this fact was corroborated, and in some places even a seventh
oscillation was recorded. The Greenwich record shows that the air-waves
took about thirty-six hours to travel from pole to pole, thus proving
that they travelled at about the rate of ordinary sound-waves, which,
roughly speaking, travel at the rate of between six and seven hundred
miles an hour.
The height of the sea-waves that devastated the neighbouring shores,
being variously estimated at from 50 to 135 feet, is sufficiently
accounted for by the intervention of islands and headlands, etcetera,
which, of course, tended to diminish the force, height, and volume of
waves in varying degrees.
These, like the air-waves, were also registered--by self-acting
tide-gauges and by personal observation--all over the world, and the
observations _coincided as to date with the great eruptions of the 26th
and 27th of August_. The influence of the sea-waves was observed and
noted in the Java sea--which is shallow and where there are innumerable
obstructions--as far as 450 miles, but to the west they swept over the
deep waters of the Indian Ocean on to Cape Horn, and even, it is said,
to the English Channel.
The unusual disturbance of ocean in various places was sufficiently
striking. At Galle, in Ceylon, where the usual rise and fall of the
tide is 2 feet, the master-attendant reports that on the afternoon of
the 27th four remarkable waves were noticed in the port. The last of
these was preceded by an unusual recession of the sea to such an extent
that small boats at their anchorage were left aground--a thing that had
never been seen before. The period of recession was only one-and-a-half
minutes; then the water paused, as it were, for a brief space, and,
beginning to rise, reached the level of the highest high-water mark in
less than two minutes, thus marking a difference of 8 feet 10 inches
instead of the ordinary 2 feet.
At one place there was an ebb and flood tide, of unusual extent, within
half-an-hour. At another, a belt of land, including a burying-ground,
was washed away, so that, according to the observer, "it appeared as if
the dead had sought shelter with the living in a neighbouring cocoa-nut
garden!" Elsewhere the tides were seen to advance and recede ten or
twelve times--in one case even twenty times--on the 27th. At
Trincomalee the sea receded three times and returned with singular
force, at one period leaving part of the shore suddenly bare, with fish
struggling in the mud. The utilitarian tendency of mankind was at once
made manifest by some fishermen who, seizing the opportunity, dashed
into the struggling mass and began to reap the accidental harvest,
when--alas for the poor fishermen!--the sea rushed in again and drove
them all away.
In the Mauritius, however, the fishers were more fortunate, for when
their beach was exposed in a similar manner, they succeeded in capturing
a good many fish before the water returned.
Even sharks were disturbed in their sinister and slimy habits of life by
this outburst of Krakatoa--and no wonder, when it is recorded that in
some places "the sea looked like water boiling heavily in a pot," and
that "the boats which were afloat were swinging in all directions." At
one place several of these monsters were flung out of their native home
into pools, where they were left struggling till their enemy man
terminated their career.
Everywhere those great waves produced phenomena which were so striking
as to attract the attention of all classes of people, to ensure record
in most parts of the world, and to call for the earnest investigation of
the scientific men of many lands--and the conclusion to which such men
have almost universally come is, that the strange vagaries of the sea
all over the earth, the mysterious sounds heard in so many widely
distant places, and the wonderful effects in the skies of every quarter
of the globe, were all due to the eruption of the Krakatoa volcano in
1883.
With reference to these last--the sky-effects--a few words may not be
out of place here.
The superfine "ultra-microscopic" dust, which was blown by the volcano
in quantities so enormous to such unusual heights, was, after dropping
its heavier particles back to earth, caught by the breezes which always
blow in the higher regions from east to west, and carried by them for
many months round and round the world. The dust was thickly and not
widely spread at first, but as time went on it gradually extended itself
on either side, becoming visible to more and more of earth's
inhabitants, and at the same time becoming necessarily less dense.
Through this medium the sun's rays had to penetrate. In so far as the
dust-particles were opaque they would obscure these rays; where they
were transparent or polished they would refract and reflect them. That
the material of which those dust-particles was composed was very various
has been ascertained, proved, and recorded by the Krakatoa Committee.
The attempt to expound this matter would probably overtax the endurance
of the average reader, yet it may interest all to know that this
dust-cloud travelled westward within the tropics at the rate of about
double the speed of an express train--say 120 miles an hour; crossed the
Indian Ocean and Africa in three days, the Atlantic in two, America in
two, and, in short, put a girdle round the world in thirteen days.
Moreover, the cloud of dust was so big that it took two or three days to
pass any given point. During its second circumnavigation it was
considerably spread and thinned, and the third time still more so,
having expanded enough to include Europe and the greater part of North
America. It had thinned away altogether and disappeared in the spring
of 1884.
Who has not seen--at least read or heard of--the gorgeous skies of the
autumn of 1883? Not only in Britain, but in all parts of the world,
these same skies were seen, admired, and commented on as marvellous.
And so they were. One of the chief peculiarities about them, besides
their splendour, was the fact that they consisted chiefly of
"afterglows"--that is, an increase of light and splendour _after_ the
setting of the sun, when, in an ordinary state of things, the grey
shadows of evening would have descended on the world. Greenish-blue
suns; pink clouds; bright yellow, orange, and crimson afterglows;
gorgeous, magnificent, blood-red skies--the commentators seemed unable
to find language adequately to describe them. Listen to a German
observer's remarks on the subject:--
"The display of November 29th was the grandest and most manifold. I
give a description as exactly as possible, for its overwhelming
magnificence still presents itself to me as if it had been yesterday.
When the sun had set about a quarter of an hour there was not much
afterglow, but I had observed a remarkably yellow bow in the south,
about 10 degrees above the horizon. In about ten minutes more this arc
rose pretty quickly, extended itself all over the east and up to and
beyond the zenith. The sailors declared, `Sir, that is the Northern
Lights.' I thought I had never seen Northern Lights in greater
splendour. After five minutes more the light had faded, though not
vanished, in the east and south, and the finest purple-red rose up in
the south-west; one could imagine one's-self in Fairyland."
All this, and a great deal more, was caused by the dust of Krakatoa!
"But how--how--why?" exclaims an impatient and puzzled reader.
"Ay--there's the rub." Rubbing, by the way, may have had something to
do with it. At all events we are safe to say that whatever there was of
electricity in the matter resulted from friction.
Here is what the men of science say--as far as we can gather and
condense.
The fine dust blown out of Krakatoa was found, under the microscope, to
consist of excessively thin, transparent plates or irregular specks of
pumice--which inconceivably minute fragments were caused by enormous
steam pressure in the interior and the sudden expansion of the masses
blown out into the atmosphere. Of this glassy dust, that which was
blown into the regions beyond the clouds must have been much finer even
than that which was examined. These glass fragments were said by Dr
Flugel to contain either innumerable air-bubbles or minute needle-like
crystals, or both. Small though these vesicles were when ejected from
the volcano, they would become still smaller by bursting when they
suddenly reached a much lower pressure of atmosphere at a great height.
Some of them, however, owing to tenacity of material and other causes,
might have failed to burst and would remain floating in the upper air as
perfect microscopic glass balloons. Thus the dust was a mass of
particles of every conceivable shape, and so fine that no watches,
boxes, or instruments were tight enough to exclude from their interior
even that portion of the dust which was heavy enough to remain on earth!
Now, to the unscientific reader it is useless to say more than that the
innumerable and varied positions of these glassy particles, some
transparent, others semi-transparent or opaque, reflecting the sun's
rays in different directions, with a complex modification of colour and
effect resulting from the blueness of the sky, the condition of the
atmosphere, and many other causes--all combined to produce the
remarkable appearances of light and colour which aroused the admiration
and wonder of the world in 1883.
The more one thinks of these things, and the deeper one dives into the
mysteries of nature, the more profoundly is one impressed at once with a
humbling sense of the limited amount of one's knowledge, and an
awe-inspiring appreciation of the illimitable fields suggested by that
comprehensive expression: "The Wonderful Works of God."