Chambers's Journal of Popular Literature, Science, and Art, Fifth Series, No. 45, Vol. I, November 8, 1884

No. 45.—Vol. I.
Price 1½ d.
SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 8, 1884.
The enormous power of this eruption can only be adequately understood by its effects; these we now briefly summarise. The explosion itself, according to Dr Verbeek, one of the Dutch Commission appointed to investigate the nature and results of this catastrophe, caused the north part of the island to be blown away, and to fall eight miles to the north, forming what is now named Steer’s Island. Moreover, the north-east portion of the island of Krakatoa was also hurled into the air, passed over Lang Island, and fell at a distance of seven miles, forming what is now known as Calmeyer Island. In proof of this, we have the fact elicited by the newly made marine survey of the Straits, that ‘ the bottom surrounding these new islands has not risen .’ This would have been the case had they been upheaved in the usual way. Not only so, but the bottom round these new islands shows a slightly increased depth in the direction of the submarine pit, nearly one thousand feet deep, which now marks the place the peak of Krakatoa occupied prior to the convulsion. But out of the midst of this deep depression there rises ‘like a gigantic club’ a remarkable column of rock of an area not more than thirty-three square feet, which projects sixteen feet above the surface of the sea. The southern part is all that is now left of the island of Krakatoa, and this fragment on its north side is now bounded by a magnificent precipitous cliff more than two thousand five hundred feet high. It has been thought by some, however, that the first portion of the island was blown away on the evening of August 26th, and that on the following morning the larger mass, answering to Calmeyer Island, was shot out by an effort still more titanic.
The shock of the explosion was felt at a distance of four thousand miles, being equal to an area of one-sixth of the earth’s surface—that is, at Burmah, Ceylon and the Andaman Islands to the north-west, in some parts of India, at Saigon and Manila to the north, at Dorey in the Geelvink Bay (New Guinea) to the east, and throughout Northern Australia to the south-west. Lloyd’s agents at Batavia, in Java, stated that on the eve of this vast explosion, the detonations ‘grew louder, till in the early morning the reports and concussions were simply deafening, not to say alarming.’ So violent were the air-waves, due to this cause, that walls were rent by them at a distance of five hundred miles, and so great the volume of smoke and ashes, that Batavia, eighty miles off, was shrouded in complete darkness for two hours. Nearly four months after the eruption, masses of floating pumice, each several acres in extent, were seen in the Straits of Sunda.