The Wichita daily eagle. [volume] (Wichita, Kan.) 1890-1906, 1902-05-25

as great as the Hottest mountain on the
earth, and twice as great as the loftiest
altitude which a balloon has ever scared
No doubt a straw will show which way
the wind blows but there are no straws
up there. There was nothing to render
the winds perceptible until Krakatoa
came to our aid Krakatoa drove into
those winds prodigious quantities Of dust.
Hundreds of cubic miles of air were thus
deprived of that invisibility which they
had hitherto maintained.
with eyes full of astonishment men
watched these vast volumes of Kraka-
toa dust on q tremendous journey. OF
course. every one knows the so-called
trade-winds on our earth's surface which
blow steadily in fixed directions, and
which are of such service TO the mariner.
But there is yet another constant wind
1t was first disclosed by hrakatoa. Be
fore the occurrence of their eruption, no
one had the slightest suspicion that far
up aloft, twenty miles over our heads,
a mighty tempest is necessarily hurry
ing, with a greater speed than that of
the awful hurricane which once laid so
large a part of Calcutta on the ground
and slew so many of its inhabitants. For
tunately for humanity, this new trade
wind does not come within less than
twenty miles of the earth's surface. We
are thus preserved from the fearful des-
truction that its unintermittent blasts
would produce, blasts against which no
tree could stand and which would, in
ten minutes. do as much damage TO
city as would, the most violent earth
1,se ind fa become
discharged with the dust of Krakatoa.
then. for the first. and, 1 may add, for
the only time, it stood revealed 10 human
vision Then il was seen that this wind
circled round the earth in the vicinity
of the equator. and completed its circuit
in about thirteen days.
THE dust manufactured by the SUI
preme CONFUSION was whirled round the
earth in the mighty atmospheric current
into which the volcano discharged it
AS the dust-cloud was swept along by
this incompatible hurricane showed
its presence in the most glorious manner
by decking the sun and the moon in
hues of unccustomcd splendor and
beauty.
The blue color in the sky under ordinary
is due TO the particles in
the air, and when the ordinary notes
of the sunbeam were reinforced by the
OF the myriads of notes
produced by Krakatoa, even the sun IL
self sometimes showed a blue tine Thus
the progress of the great dust-cloud was
traced out by the extraordinary sky eff
fects produced, and from the progress
OF the dust-cloud we inferred the move
ments of the invisible air currents which
carried it along. or need 1t be thought
than the quantity of material projected
from Krakatoa should have been made
quate to produce effects Of this world
wide description. Imagine that the ma
terial which was blown TO the winds OF
heaven by the supreme commissions OF
Krakatoa could be all recovered and
swept into one vast heap. Imagine that
the heap were to have its bulk measured
BY a vessel consisting OF cube one
mile long one mile broad. and one mile
deep: it has been estimated that even
this prodigious vessel would have to be
filled to the brim at least 10 times before
all the products OF Krakatoa had been