pletely 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.
I t 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-volcamc
origin.
To the eastward, the long string of islands from Java,
passing by the north of Timor and away to Banda, 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 Gilblo, and all the
small islands around it, the northern extremity of Celebes,
and the islands of Siau and Sanguir, 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