one of the others
takes up the thundering anthem and carries it on for a few years or
centuries and then lapses into silence, having done its part. While we
were there it was Merapi's turn to thunder and on this particular
morning Merapi was busy before daylight.

For fifty miles along the horizon, a trail of black smoke swept like the
trail of black smoke which a train leaves in its wake on a still day.
There was not another cloud in the eastern skies. Nothing but that trail
of black smoke as we stood on the top of Boroboedoer at dawn and
watched.

Then something happened. It was, as if some magician had waved a magic
wand back of the mountain. The rising sun was the magician. We saw its
heralds spreading out, like great golden fan-ribs with the cone of the
volcano, its direct center of convergence. Then before our astonished,
our utterly bewildered, and our fascinated eyes, that old volcanic cone
was changed to a cone of gold. Then the golden cone commenced to belch
forth golden smoke. And finally the trail of smoke for fifty miles along
the horizon became a trail of golden smoke.

This was a Flash-Light that literally burned its way into our memories
to remain forever.

There is another Flash-Light Physical which has to do with another
volcano which I mentioned in the preceding chapter. Bromo is its name.
It is still there, down on the extreme eastern end of Java, unless in
the meantime the old rascal has taken it into his demoniacal head to
blow himself to pieces as he threatened to do the day we lay on our
stomachs, holding on to the earth, with the sides trembling beneath us.

Old Bromo was well named. It reminds one of Bromo-Seltzer. I had heard
of him long before I reached Java. I had heard of the Sand Plains down
into the midst of whose silver whiteness he was set, like a great
conical gem of dark purple by day and fire by night.

Travelers said "You must see Bromo! You must see Bromo! If you miss
everything else see Bromo! It's the most completely satisfactory volcano
in the world."

It was two o'clock in the morning when we started on little rugged
Javanese ponies up Bromo's steep slopes.

At daybreak we reached the mile high cliff which looks down into the
world-famous Sand Sea. It was a sea of white fog. I have seen the same
thing at the Grand Canyon and in Yosemite looking down from the rims. I
thought of these great American canyons as I looked down into the Bromo
Sand Sea. By noon this was a gr