Wonders of Creation

Merapia-Great Eruption, with Hurricane-Another, very destructive-Mud Volcano Crater of Tankuban-Prahu-Island of Sumbáwa-Volc

Archipelago in the Indian Ocean. They form a chain stretching from east to west, but curving up toward

one time or other been active volcanoes. Only a few of them, however, have been in activity in more recent times. The most remarkable eruption was that of the mountain named Papandayang, whi

artillery. Besides that part of the mountain which thus fell in, a large extent of ground in its neighbourhood was ingulfed. The space measured fifteen miles in length and six in breadth. The ground for many miles round this space was covered with immense quantities of ashes, stones, cinders, and other substances thrown out by the volcano. These were, on many parts of the surface, accumu

le explosion of stones, ashes, &c., followed by a stream of hot mud, which overspread a large tract of grou

ied by a violent hurricane. The bed of a river was filled up by the matter thrown out from the crater, and the destruction of property in crops, &c., was immense. Fortunately the inhabitants

feet in diameter, and which at intervals of a few seconds is pushed upwards by a force acting from beneath to a height of between twenty and thirty feet. It then suddenly explodes with a loud noise, scattering in every direction a quantity of black mud, which has a strong pungent smell resembling that of coal-tar, and is considerably warmer than the air. With the mud thus thrown ou

the one from the other by a narrow ridge of rock, to which it is possible to descend and view them both. Each of them is elliptical in form, and surrounded by a crater-wall. That of the western, which the natives call the poison-crater, is a rapid slope nearly a thousand feet in depth, and is densely covered with brushwood almost to the bottom. The flat flo

m by the action of the vapours, to which they are continually exposed. The bottom of this crater consists of mud mixed with sulphur; but round the edges are some stones and hard masses. These are the remnants of an eruption which took place from thi

Celebes, Sumatra, and Borneo. The concussions produced by its explosions were sensible at a distance of a thousand miles all round; and their sound is said to have been heard even at so great a distance as seventeen hundred miles. In Java the day was darkened by clouds of ashes, thrown from the mountain to that great distance (three hundred miles), and the houses, streets, and fields, were covered

st, ashes, stones, and cinders thrown up from the crater. Between nine and ten o'clock at night the ashes and stones began to fall upon the village of Sang'ir, and all round the neighbourhood of the mountain. Then arose a dreadful whirlwind, which blew down nearly every house in the village, tossing the roofs and lighter parts high into the air. In the neighbouring sea-port the effects

came more moderate, the intervals between them gradually increasing till the 15th of July, when they ceased. Almost all the villages for a long distance round the mountain were destroyed;

ved as a lighthouse to mariners navigating those seas. But in the year 1637 there took place a great eruption of the mountain, which ended in i

chian, there occurred in the year 1646 an extraordinary event. A mountain was rent from top to bottom,

56. A large portion of the mountain fell down, and tremendous floods of water issued forth

Bourbon, containing the volcano Salazes, which occasionally throws out the c