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We have said nothing concerning the most terrible explosion of all, that of the volcanic island of Krakatoa, off the Javan coast. This event was so phenomenal as to deserve a chapter of its own, for which we reserve it. The United States, as one result of its recent acquisition of island dominions, has added largely to its wealth in volcanic mountains.
Everywhere those great waves produced phenomena which were so striking as to attract the attention of all classes of people, to ensure record in most parts of the world, and to call for the earnest investigation of the scientific men of many lands and the conclusion to which such men have almost universally come is, that the strange vagaries of the sea all over the earth, the mysterious sounds heard in so many widely distant places, and the wonderful effects in the skies of every quarter of the globe, were all due to the eruption of the Krakatoa volcano in 1883.
The numerous vents which had previously been noticed on Krakatoa must at that moment have been blown into one, and the original crater of the old volcano said to have been about six miles in diameter must have resumed its destructive work.
This would be little indeed compared with what is recorded on testimony which it is impossible to doubt. "Westward from Krakatoa stretches the wide expanse of the Indian Ocean. On the opposite side from the Straits of Sunda lies the island of Rodriguez, the distance from Krakatoa being almost three thousand miles.
Or, an entire mountain may disappear, being reduced to lapilli and dust and blown into the air, as in the case of Krakatoa, in the Straits of Sunda, in 1883. "The essential feature of a volcano, as stated above, is a tube or conduit, leading from the highly heated sub-crust portion of the earth to the crater and through which molten rock is forced upward to the surface.
At each of these explosions a tremendous sea-wave was created by the volcano, which swept like a watery ring from Krakatoa as a centre to the surrounding shores.
Altogether, what with the increasing darkness and the hissing squall, and the night-voyage before them, and the fires of Krakatoa which were now clearly visible on the horizon, Nigel Boy felt a more eerie sensation in his breast than he ever remembered to have experienced in all his previous life, but he scorned to admit the fact even to himself, and said, mentally, that it was rather romantic than otherwise!
The three men who were so near to the volcano at that moment involuntarily looked round and saw by the lurid blaze that an enormous mass of Krakatoa, rent from top to bottom, was falling headlong into the sea; while the entire heavens were alive with flame, lightning, steam, smoke, and the upward-shooting fragments of the hideous wreck!
This, however, is limited to the period of geology which gives record of organic life, and not to the earlier astronomical period; nor does it exclude changes in temperature, climate, distribution of seas and lands; nor does it "affirm positively that there may not have been in past ages explosions more violent than that of Krakatoa; lava-streams more extensive than that of Skaptar-Jokul, and earthquakes more powerful than that which uplifted five or six hundred miles of the Pacific coast of South America six or seven feet."
The fine dust blown out of Krakatoa was found, under the microscope, to consist of excessively thin, transparent plates or irregular specks of pumice which inconceivably minute fragments were caused by enormous steam pressure in the interior and the sudden expansion of the masses blown out into the atmosphere.
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