This mountain, in 1767, sent up a cone of flame of forty feet in
diameter at base, for ten days, and for two months a wide stream of lava
poured from its crater. A month later there gushed forth great floods of
water, which filled the rivers to overflow, doing widespread damage
to the neighboring plantations. But its greatest and most destructive
eruption took place in 1812, the year of the great eruption of the St.
Vincent volcano. On this fatal occasion several towns were destroyed and
no less than 12,000 people lost their lives. The debris flung forth
from the crater were so abundant that deposits deep enough to bury the
tallest trees were formed near the mountain. In 1867 another disastrous
explosion took place, and still another in 1888. A disaster different
in kind and cause occurred in 1876, when a terrible tropical storm burst
upon the mountain. The floods of rain swept from its sides the loose
volcanic material, and brought destruction to the neighboring country,
more than six thousand houses being ruined by the rushing flood.

BULUSAN AND TAAL

Bulusan, a volcano on the southern extremity of the island, resembles
Vesuvius in shape. For many years it remained dormant, but in 1852 smoke
began to issue from its crater. In some respects the most interesting
of these three volcanoes is that of Taal, which lies almost due south
of Manila and about forty-five miles distant, on a small island in
the middle of a large lake, known as Bombom or Bongbong. A remarkable
feature of this volcanic mountain is that it is probably the lowest in
the world, its height being only 850 feet above sea level. There are
doubtful traditions that Lake Bombom, a hundred square miles in extent,
was formed by a terrible eruption in 1700, by which a lofty mountain
8000 or 9000 feet high, was destroyed. The vast deposits of porous
tufa in the surrounding country are certainly evidences of former great
eruptions from Mount Taal.

The crater of this volcano is an immense, cup-shaped depression, a mile
or more in diameter and about 800 feet deep. When recently visited by
Professor Worcester, during his travels in these islands, he found it to
contain three boiling lakelets of strangely-colored water, one being of
a dirty brown hue, a second intensely yellow in tint, and the third of a
brilliant emerald green. The mountain still steams and fumes, as if too
actively at work below to be at rest above. In past times it has shown
the forces at p