Vermont phÅ“nix. [volume] (Brattleboro, Vt.) 1834-1955, 1895-04-12

we steamed away and made for the other
side of the island, turning our bow to the
windward.
When we landed on the coast opposite to
that along which the river of sulphur was
discharging, we saw no signs of inhabitants.
The waves were washing the sandy shores.
-Four or five feet from the water-line rose
straight bank of powdered pumice-stone
which was rained down constantly from
the clouds that surrounded the column of
fire. Everything human, everything nat
ural, everything suggestive of life or growth
had been annihiated from what had been
a beautiful landscape. A hideous mask of
burning stone and steaming ashes had been
deposited over all. Trees three feet thick,
and which must have been fifty feet high
were already nearly buried, their branches
twelve inches thick sticking out here and
there. Several of us landed, and | began
walking inland. We sunk knee-deep in
the loose pumice it was the consistency
of snow, and hot. Our feet began to bis
ter.
climbed painfully up, walking inland
in the direction of the crater, which | de-
sired to measure with my seXtant. At the
third observation made, | saw something
trfckling across the mirror of the seXtant
and discovered that the quicksilver had
melted and run away.
was more than half mile now from
the edge of the crater. My skin was roast
ing and cracking. The roar of the flames
was so loud as to drown any other magma
BILE noise, save the detonations now and
then, of the bursting stones which would
fly into fragments far up over our heads it
seemed, and sift their burning dust upon
us. For the first three hundred feet from
the edge of the crater, the ascending column
was one uniform white-hot mass of clear
flame of dazzling brightness, of such
scorching energy as to blast us into Gin
der, did we dare nearer approach. This
column of flame was, as l have said, about
one and a half miles in diameter
l turned to retrace my footsteps and
seek safety on the water. AS | started to
put my feet mechanically back into the
prints they had made going up, | shud-
dered. The bottom of each footprint was
red, aglow with fire from beneath. Here
and there on the surface, | saw the tracks
of pigs feet, the creature evidently panic
stricken in its race for life. Every human
being, every animal, every bird on the
island of Krakatoa must have persisted by
that time, and if we had not increased our
speed, the same fate might have been ours.
At last we got aboard again, and from the
steamers deck photographed that awful
scene, the fire pump playing all around
me the while, wetting down the rigging,
keeping the double awnings moist and
saturating the side of the ship; it was the
only way to keep her from taking fire.
That had been necessary since daylight.
The steamer returned to Batavia, the
ually in our ears, the glare from its fires
gradually dimming in the distance. That
roar and that glare lasted steadily day and
night until the l2lh of August. By that
! time everybody had gotten used to it and
nobody spoke of it any more. We sup
posed KrakatOa would burn itself out after
a while and rest again, perhaps for anoth-
er hundred years.
In the meantime | had taken up my
residence in the city of AMER, on the Strait
of Sunda, west of Batavia. 1t had with
its surroundings from Merak Point to Bod
! janegoro, about sixty thousand inhabitants.
lived in a villa a mile back of the city,
up the mountain slope. The city lay along
the margin of the sea- the houses of brick
and bamboo, being nearly all one sto-
ry high. Along the coast at each side of
the city, clustered groups of fishermen S
| huts, and their fishing boats by the score
lay at anchor a short distance from shore.
I Over the low roofs of the city, | could see
far out over the strait to where the
Krakatoa monster, thirty miles away, was
belching out his awful and never-ending
eruption.
1t was Sunday morning. l was sitting
on the veranda of my house smoking a CT
and faEinn m TDnrnino of foe
The scene was a perfect one. Across the
roofs of the native houses | could see the
fishing-smacks lying in the bay at anchor,
the fishermen themselves being on shore at
rest as they did not work that day. The
birds were singing in the grove at my back
| and moment before | had heard one of
the servants moving around in the cottage.
AS my gaze rested on the masts of the lit
tie boats, of which there were several
score in sight, became suddenly aware OF
the fact that they were all moving in one
direction. In an instant, to my intense
surprise, they all disappeared.
l ran out of the house, back, up higher,
to where l could command a better view,
and looked out far into sea. Instantly a
great glare of fire right in the midst of the
water caught my eyes, and all the way
across the bay and the strait, and in a
straight line of flame to the very island of
Krakatoa itself, the bottom of the sea
seemed to have cracked open so that the
! subterranean fires were belching forth. On
either side of this wall of flames, down
into this subaqueous chasm, the waters of
the strait were pouring with tremendous
kissing sound, which seemed at every mo-
ment as if the flames would be eXtinguish-
| ed; but they were not. There were twin
cataracts, and between the two cataracts
rose a great cracking wall of fire hemmed
in by clouds of steam of the same cottony
! appearance which have spoken of before.
1t was in this abyss that the fishing boats
were disappearing even as | looked, whirl-
ing down the Kissing precipice, the roar OF
| which was already calling out excited
crowds in the city of AMER at my feet
The sight was such an extraordinary one
that it took away the power of reason, and
! without attempting in any way to explain
to myself what it was, | turned and beck
| oned to some one, any human being, to a
servant we will say, to come and see it.
! Then in a moment, while my eyes were
! turned, came an immense deafening eXplo-
sion which was greater than any we had
heard as yet proceeding from Krakatoa. 1t
stunned me, and it was a minute or two
before l realized that when once more
turned my eyes toward the bay, could see
nothing. Darkness had instantly shroud-
ed the world. Through this darkness,
which was puctuated by distant cries and
groans, the falling of heavy bodies, and
! the creaking disruption of masses of brick
and timber, most of all, the roaring and
crashing of breakers on the ocean were