es, destroying the
adjacent villages, 36,000 people being either washed away or buried
under the boiling rain of mud, fire, and ashes. The Royal Society
estimated the altitude of the vast black and crimson column of flame
and smoke, mounting from the volcano, at seventeen miles. The ashes
fell at Singapore and on the Cocos Isles, respectively five and eight
hundred miles away, the ejection of volcanic matter being computed at
more than four cubic miles in extent. Krakatau, reduced from thirteen
to six square miles, from the northern portion of the symmetrical
pyramid being completely blown away by the volcanic fires, retains the
conical peak of Mount Radaka, nearly three thousand feet high. Some of
the contiguous islands sank beneath the waves, others changed their
shape, and the formation of various banks and shoals added fresh
difficulties to the intricate navigation of reef-bound seas. Thrilling
stories are told of the enveloping pall of smoke and ashes, which
shrouded Java in midnight gloom, amid the continuous roar of violent
explosions which led up to the awful climax of the final catastrophe.
Red-hot stones and burning cinders fired the ships, the weight of
pumice sinking _praus_ and fishing smacks as it fell into the hissing
sea, and a 600-ton schooner, thrown by the force of the world-shaking
concussion into a mountain cleft of the opposite coast, still lies
wedged between the black walls of rock. The floating pumice, which
filled the harbour of Batavia with layers so deep that planks resting
upon it made a safe bridge over a mile in length, drifted even to
Zanzibar and Madagascar. The fine dust, expelled into the upper air,
painted the sunset heavens with these translucent green and violet
tints which enhanced the pageantry of cloudland throughout the world
for many months after the fiery forces had expended themselves. Smoke
still issues from Krakatau, though the vast rent in the cloven pyramid
must materially diminish the power of any future eruption, and Nature's
busy hand already covers the torn side of the precipitous cone with a
green veil of sparse vegetation. A curious marine growth of weed and
moss rooted itself on Krakatau three years after the phenomenal
eruption, from seeds floating on the tide or carried by the wind. The
thin soil formed by these decaying plants, and enriched by the chemical
ingredients of disintegrating volcanic ash, in time produced a more
luxuriant verdure, and in the interval e