HKB
torrent overcame, by its heat and pressure, this obstacle, and poured down the mountain side with a frightful noise, which was heard for a distance of more than fifty miles.[479]
The Kurile chain of islands constitutes the prolongation of the Kamtschatka range, where a train of volcanic mountains, nine of which are known to have been in eruption, trends in a southerly direction. The line is then continued to the southwest in the great island of Jesso, and again in Nipon, the principal of the Japanese group. It then extends by Loo Choo and Formosa to the Philippine Islands, and thence by Sangir and the northeastern extremity of Celebes to the Moluccas (see map, fig. 39). Afterwards it passes westward through Sumbawa to Java.
There are said to be thirty-eight considerable volcanoes in Java, some of which are more than 10,000 feet high. They are remarkable for the quantity of sulphur and sulphureous vapors which they discharge. They rarely emit lava, but rivers of mud issue from them, like the moya of the Andes of Quito. The memorable eruption of Galongoon, in 1822, will be described in the twenty-fifth chapter. The crater of Taschem, at the eastern extremity of Java, contains a lake strongly impregnated with sulphuric acid, a quarter of a mile long, from which a river of acid water issues, which supports no living creature, nor can fish live in the sea near its confluence. There is an extinct crater near Batur, called Guevo Upas, or the Valley of Poison, about half a mile in circumference, which is justly an object of terror to the inhabitants of the country. Every living being which penetrates into this valley falls down dead, and the soil is covered with the carcasses of tigers, deer, birds, and even the bones of men; all killed by the abundant emanations of carbonic acid gas, by which the bottom of the valley is filled.
In another crater in this land of wonders, near the volcano of Talaga Bodas, we learn from M. Reinwardt, that the sulphureous exhalations have killed tigers, birds, and innumerable insects; and the soft parts of these animals, such as the fibres, muscles, nails, hair, and skin, are very well preserved, while the bones are corroded, and entirely destroyed.
We learn from observations made in 1844, by Mr. Jukes, that a recent tertiary formation composed of limestone and resembling the coral rock of a fringing reef, clings to the flanks of all the volcanic islands from the east end of Timor to the west end of Java. These modern calcareous strata are often white and chalk-like, sometimes 1000 feet and upwards above the sea, regularly stratified in thick horizontal beds, and they show that there has been a general elevation of these islands at a comparatively modern period.[480]
The same linear arrangement which is observed in Java holds good in the volcanoes of Sumatra, some of which are of great height, as Berapi, which is more than 12,000 feet above the sea, and is continually smoking. Hot springs are abundant at its base. The volcanic line then inclines slightly to the northwest, and points to Barren Island, lat. 12 degrees 15 minutes N., in the Bay of Bengal. This volcano was in eruption in 1792, and will be described in the twenty-sixth chapter. The volcanic train then extends, according to Dr. Macclelland, to the island of Narcondam, lat. 13 degrees. 22 minutes N., which is a cone seven or eight hundred feet high, rising from deep water, and said to present signs of lava currents descending from the crater to the base. Afterwards the train stretches in the same direction to the volcanic island of Ramree, about lat. 19 degrees. N., and the adjoining island of Cheduba, which is represented in old charts as a burning mountain. Thus we arrive at the Chittagong coast, which in 1762 was convulsed by a tremendous earthquake (see chap. 29).[481]