The Malay Archipelago, vol 1 | Page 7

record. Forty villages were destroyed by the eruption of
Papandayang in Java, in 1772, when the whole mountain was blown up
by repeated explosions, and a large lake left in its place. By the great
eruption of Tomboro in Sumbawa, in 1815, 12,000 people were
destroyed, and the ashes darkened the air and fell thickly upon the earth
and sea for 300 miles around. Even quite recently, since I left the
country, a mountain which had been quiescent for more than 200 years
suddenly burst into activity. The island of Makian, one of the Moluccas,
was rent open in 1646 by a violent eruption which left a huge chasm on
one side, extending into the heart of the mountain. It was, when I last
visited it in 1860, clothed with vegetation to the summit, and contained
twelve populous Malay villages. On the 29th of December, 1862, after

215 years of perfect inaction, it again suddenly burst forth, blowing up
and completely altering the appearance of the mountain, destroying the
greater part of the inhabitants, and sending forth such volumes of ashes
as to darken the air at Ternate, forty miles off, and to almost entirely
destroy the growing crops on that and the surrounding islands.
The island of Java contains more volcanoes, active and extinct, than
any other known district of equal extent. They are about forty-five in
number, and many of them exhibit most beautiful examples of the
volcanic cone on a large scale, single or double, with entire or truncated
summits, and averaging 10,000 feet high.
It is now well ascertained that almost all volcanoes have been slowly
built up by the accumulation of matter--mud, ashes, and lava--ejected
by themselves. The openings or craters, however, frequently shift their
position, so that a country may be covered with a more or less irregular
series of hills in chains and masses, only here and there rising into lofty
cones, and yet the whole may be produced by true volcanic action. In
this manner the greater part of Java has been formed. There has been
some elevation, especially on the south coast, where extensive cliffs of
coral limestone are found; and there may be a substratum of older
stratified rocks; but still essentially Java is volcanic, and that noble and
fertile island--the very garden of the East, and perhaps upon the whole
the richest, the best cultivated, and the best governed tropical island in
the world--owes its very existence to the same intense volcanic activity
which still occasionally devastates its surface.
The great island of Sumatra exhibits, in proportion to its extent, a much
smaller number of volcanoes, and a considerable portion of it has
probably a non-volcanic origin.
To the eastward, the long string of islands from Java, passing by the
north of Timor and away to Panda, are probably all due to volcanic
action. Timor itself consists of ancient stratified rocks, but is said to
have one volcano near its centre.
Going northward, Amboyna, a part of Bouru, and the west end of
Ceram, the north part of Gilolo, and all the small islands around it, the

northern extremity of Celebes, and the islands of Sian and Sang-air, are
wholly volcanic. The Philippine Archipelago contains many active and
extinct volcanoes, and has probably been reduced to its present
fragmentary condition by subsidences attending on volcanic action.
All along this great line of volcanoes are to be found more or less
palpable signs of upheaval and depression of land. The range of islands
south of Sumatra, a part of the south coast of Java and of the islands
east of it, the west and east end of Timor, portions of all the Moluccas,
the Ke and Aru Islands, Waigiou, and the whole south and east of
Gilolo, consist in a great measure of upraised coral-rock, exactly
corresponding to that now forming in the adjacent seas. In many places
I have observed the unaltered surfaces of the elevated reefs, with great
masses of coral standing up in their natural position, and hundreds of
shells so fresh-looking that it was hard to believe that they had been
more than a few years out of the water; and, in fact, it is very probable
that such changes have occurred within a few centuries.
The united lengths of these volcanic belts is about ninety degrees, or
one-fourth of the entire circumference of the globe. Their width is
about fifty miles; but, for a space of two hundred miles on each side of
them, evidences of subterranean action are to be found in recently
elevated coral-rock, or in barrier coral- reefs, indicating recent
submergence. In the very centre or focus of the great curve of
volcanoes is placed the large island of Borneo, in which no sign of
recent volcanic action has yet been observed, and where