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Updated: May 28, 2025
The tufa and pumice-stone are so friable that, as we have said, the rock can be dug or burrowed with the most primitive implements. It was easier, in fact, to excavate dwellings than to pile up walls in the open air. Therefore the northern sides of these secluded gorges are perforated in many places by openings similar in appearance to pigeon-holes.
On the 4th and 5th, our navigators, continuing their course to the south-east, passed great quantities of pumice-stone. These stones appeared to have been thrown into the sea by eruptions of various dates, as many of them were covered with barnacles, and others quite bare. On the 13th, they had a most violent gale from the northward.
"When you've finished making that mess worse than it is," said Meldon, "and covering your own fingers all over with ink in such a way that it will take days of careful rubbing with pumice-stone to get them clean, perhaps you'll go on telling me why you call this fellow Simpkins a meddlesome ass. I was up early this morning, owing to the baby's being restless during the night.
Franklin scraped off all the nice varnish with pumice-stone, and made what he described as a surface to work on.
I can destroy you, but my name is Clementine and so I will grant you mercy. I will only banish you to your rocks. There you shall remain until the last hour of the last day. Papaluka, Papaluka, Emerald, perform thy duty!" The giant of pumice-stone immediately glowed like molten iron.
Only of those which returned to recover valuables, &c., were overtaken and covered by the shower of red hot rapilli, or fragments of pumice-stone, which, with succeeding showers of ashes, covered the town to the depth of 7-8 feet. "The present superincumbent mass is about 20 feet in thickness." In the one third of the town already excavated the skeletons of some 500 have been found.
It was not alone from the volcano that they derived their strange opacity and weight. Scoriae, in a state of dust, like powdered pumice-stone, and grayish ashes as small as the finest feculae, were held in suspension in the midst of their thick folds. These ashes are so fine that they have been observed in the air for whole months.
On examining the ashes, they had the appearance of calcined pumice-stone, nearly of the colour of wood ashes. In many places on the deck they lay a foot thick. They were perfectly tasteless, and had no smell of sulphur, though there was a slight burnt odour from them. We now stood back towards Sumbawa, as, with the wind from the eastward, it was the only course we could steer.
Wild pigeons, parrots, and other birds were about the summit of the island but, having no firearms, relief of that kind was not to be expected unless we should find some unfrequented spot where the birds were so tame that we might take them with our hands. The shore of this island is very rocky except the place at which we landed, and here I picked up many pieces of pumice-stone.
The path led straight up a rugged sweep of loose chunks of pumice-stone, and for about every two steps forward we took, we slid back one. It was so excessively steep that we had to stop, every fifty or sixty steps, and rest a moment. To see our comrades, we had to look very nearly straight up at those above us, and very nearly straight down at those below.
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