rrated Widodaren, set in the wild solitude of this desolate Sahara,
form a startling picture, suggesting a sudden revelation of Nature's
mysterious laboratories. The deep roar of subterranean thunder, and the
fleecy clouds of sulphureous smoke ever rising from the vast furnaces
of the Bromo, emphasise the solemnity of the marvellous scene. Native
ideas recognise this terror-haunted landscape as the point where Times
touches Eternity, and natural forces blend with occult influences.
Tjewara Lawang, "the gate of the spirits," traditionally haunted by the
countless _Devas_ of Hindu Pantheism, bounds the ribbed and tumbled
Sand Sea with a black bridge of fretted crags, from whence the
invisible host keeps watch and ward over the regions of eternal fire.

By a fortunate coincidence, the annual festival of the Bromo is
celebrated to-day, when Siva, the Third Person of the Hindu Triad, is
propitiated by a living sacrifice. Goats and buffaloes were flung into
the flaming crater long after the offering of human victims was
discontinued, but, alas for the chicanery of a degenerate age! even the
terrified animals thrown into the air by the sacrificing priest never
reach the mystic under-world, their downward progress being arrested by
a skilled accomplice, who catches them at a lower level, and risks
great Siva's wrath by preserving them for more prosaic uses. The
silence of the Sand Sea is broken to-day by the bustle of a gay market
on the brink of the yellow plain. The terrific descent through a gash
in the precipice, carved by falling boulders, landslips, and torrential
rains, lands the battered pilgrim in the midst of a lively throng in
festal array. Girls in rose and orange _saris_, with silver pins in
sleek dark hair plaited with skeins of scarlet wool, dismount from
rough ponies for refreshment, or gallop across the Sand Sea to the
mountain of sacrifice. The turbaned men in rough garb of indigo and
brown show less zeal than their womenkind, and betel-chewing, smoking,
or the consumption of syrups and sweetmeats, prove more attractive than
the religious service, for modern materialism extends even to these
remote shores, and the Avenging God is often worshipped by proxy.

The Sand Sea was originally the base of the Tengger volcano, split from
head to foot by an appalling eruption, which forced mud, sand, and lava
from the enclosing walls into the surrounding valley. Fresh craters
formed in the vast depths of sand and molten