riest
to another, and saved for the cooking-pot, but a tough-looking
chanticleer of the Cochin China persuasion is finally selected, and
cast into the seething pit to propitiate the terrible wrath of the
Avenging Deity at the smallest expense and loss to the astute
priesthood. At the close of the sacerdotal is sacreligious performance,
we mount the shaking ladder to a thatched shed on the rim of the
crater. From hence, between the dense volumes of smoke, the huge cavity
is visible to a depth of 600 feet. Sallow clouds of sulphur emerge from
a pandemonium of tumultuous clamour; red-hot stones shoot upward, but
fall back into the chasm before they reach us; burning ashes strike the
smooth walls with a weird scream, and then whirl back into the
darkness; yellow solfataras rise in foaming jets, with the fierce hiss
of unseen serpents, and bellowing thunders shake the earth. The superb
spectacle of nature's power in her armoury of terror is unique among
the volcanos of Java, for unless the Bromo blazes in the throes of a
violent eruption, when the ascent to the crater becomes impossible, no
danger exists in gazing down into the mysterious abyss. At every gust
which rages round this laboratory of Nature, the vast clouds--black,
yellow, and blue--floating away into space, assume grotesque forms
suggesting primeval monsters or menacing giants, darkening the skies
with their ghostly presence. Driving rain and a rising gale hasten a
rapid descent to the Sand Sea, but the sudden storm dies away into
sunlit mists. The climb to the Moenggal Pass is complicated by a series
of pools and cascades; the horses pick their own perilous way, but the
management of the chairs by the noisy coolies demands superhuman
strength and security of hand and foot, the crazy and battered _doolie_
escaping falls and collisions by a continuous miracle.

The expedition to Ngandwona, in the heart of the hills, skirts green
precipices and traverses brown _campongs_ forlorn and neglected, like
this stranded Hindu race, incapable of adjustment to life's law of
change, and retaining the form without the spirit of the past. The
glens lie veiled in cloud, but the peaks bask in sunshine. Waterfalls
dash through thickets of crimson foxglove, and daturas swing their
fragrant bells over the dancing water. A little goatherd, leading his
bleating flock, plays on a reed flute to summon a straggler from a
distant crag. The brown figure, in linen waistcloth and yellow tur