Travels in the East Indian archipelago

by Albert S. Bickmore

CHAPTER III.
THE FLORA AND FAUNA OF THE TROPICAL EAST.

June 15th.—At 8 A. M. we left our anchorage off Surabaya, and steamed down the Madura Strait for Macassar, the capital of Celebes. Along the shores of the strait were many villages of fishermen, and bamboo weirs extending out to a distance of five or six miles from both the Java and Madura shores, and showing well how shallow the water must be so far from land. During the forenoon it was nearly calm, but the motion of the steamer supplied a pleasant air. In the afternoon the wind rose to a light breeze from the east. At noon we passed Pulo Kambing (“Goat Island”), a small, low coral island off the south coast of Madura. Near by was a fleet of small fishing-boats, each containing two men, who were only protected from the broiling sun by a hat and a narrow cloth about the loins. These boats and other larger ones farther out to sea were extremely narrow, and provided with outriggers.

Madura receives its name from a Hindu legend, which makes it the abode of the demigod, Baladewa. It has but one mountain-range, and that crosses it from north to south. It is, therefore, not well watered, and unsuitable for raising rice; and many of its people have been obliged to migrate to the adjoining fertile shores of Java. The coffee-tree is raised on this island, but the land is best adapted for pasturage of the sapi, which is similar in its habits to our own neat-cattle, and never wallows in mires and morasses like the buffalo. In the mountains on the western part of Java, a wild species, the banteng (Bos sondaicus), is still found. It is not regarded as the source of the sapi, but a fertile cross is obtained from the two, and this intermediate breed is said to be the one used on Bali and Lombok. The sapi is found on all the islands to and including Timur, on Borneo, Celebes, and the Spice Islands, and has been introduced into the Philippines since their discovery, and now lives in a wild state on Luzon, just as the cattle of the pampas in South America, which have also descended from the domesticated breeds imported by the Spaniards.

On the eastern end of the island, which is quite low, great quantities of salt are obtained by evaporating water in “pans,” or small areas enclosed with low dikes, like rice-fields. It is also manufactured in a similar manner at several places on the north coast of Java and on the western shore of Luzon, in the province of Pangasinan. Generally the coasts of the islands throughout the archipelago are either too high, or so low as to form merely muddy morasses, which are mostly covered with a dense growth of mangroves. In some places on the south coast of Java, sea-water is sprinkled over sand. When this water has evaporated, the process is repeated. The sand is then gathered, and water filtered through it and evaporated by artificial heat. In Borneo, and among some of the Philippines, marine plants are burned, and the lye made from their ashes is evaporated for the sake of the salt contained in the residuum. All through the interior, and among the mountains, houses are built for storing it, and officials are appointed to dispose of it to the natives. The quantity yearly manufactured for the government at all the various places is about 40,000 koyangs, or 80,000 tons; but it is not allowed to be shipped and used until it is five years old, and a supply of 200,000 koyangs, or 400,000 tons, is therefore constantly kept on hand. It is deposited in the government store-houses by individuals at one-third of a guilder per picul. It is then transported and sold at a great profit by the government, which monopolizes the traffic in this necessary condiment, and obtains a large portion of its revenue in this manner.[10]

In the afternoon we were abreast the high Tenger (i. e., wide or spacious) mountains. Here is the famous “Sandy Sea,” a strange thing on an island covered with such luxuriant vegetation as everywhere appears in Java. To reach it one has to climb an old volcano to a height of about 7,500 feet above the sea, when he suddenly finds himself on the rim of an old crater of an irregular elliptical form, with a minor axis of three and a half and a major axis of four and a half miles. It is the largest crater in Java, and one of the largest in the world. Its bottom is a level floor of sand, which in some places is drifted by the wind like the sea, and is properly named in Malay the Laut Pasar, or “Sandy Sea.” From this sandy floor rise four cones, where the eruptive force has successively found vent for a time, the greatest being evidently the oldest, and the smallest the present active Bromo, or Brama, from the Sanscrit Brama, the god of fire. The position and relation of this Bromo, as compared to the surrounding crater, is entirely analogous to those that exist between Vesuvius and Monte Somma. The outer walls of this old mountain are of trachytic lava, and Dr. Junghuhn thinks its history may be summed up thus: first, a period when the trachyte was formed; this was followed by a period of trachytic lavas, then of obsidian; fourth, of obsidian and pumice-stone; fifth, the sand period, during which an enormous quantity of sand was thrown out, and the present sandy floor formed with the cones rising from it; and sixth, the present ash-period, during which only fine ashes are thrown out from time to time, and steam and sulphurous acid gas are constantly emitted.

The earliest descriptions of this crater represent it nearly as it is seen at the present day; but great eruptions, similar to the one supposed to have occurred, have been witnessed by Europeans since they first came to Java. In the year 1772 the volcano Papandayang, which is near the south coast of Java, and about in Long. 108° E., threw out such an immense quantity of scoriæ and ashes, that Dr. Junghuhn thinks a layer nearly fifty feet thick was spread over an area within a radius of seven miles; and yet all this was thrown out during a single night. Forty native villages were buried beneath it, and about three thousand souls are supposed to have perished between this single setting and rising of the sun. Dr. Horsfield, who drew up an account of this terrible phenomenon from the stories of the natives, wrongly supposed that “an extent of ground, of the mountain and its environs, fifteen miles long, and full six broad, was by this commotion swallowed up within the bowels of the earth.”

On the 8th of July, 1822, Mount Galunggong, an old volcano, but a few miles northeast of Papandayang, suffered a far more terrible and destructive eruption. At noon on that day not a cloud could be seen in the sky. The wild beasts gladly sought the friendly shades of the dense forest; the hum of myriads of insects was hushed, and not a sound was to be heard over the highly-cultivated declivities of this mountain, or over the rich adjoining plain, but the dull creaking of some native cart drawn by the sluggish buffalo. The natives, under shelter of their rude huts, were giving themselves up to indolent repose, when suddenly a frightful thundering was heard in the earth; and from the top of this old volcano a dark, dense mass was seen rising higher and higher into the air, and spreading itself out over the clear sky with such an appalling rapidity that in a few moments the whole landscape was shrouded in the darkness of night.

Through this thick darkness flashes of lightning gleamed in a hundred lines, and many natives were instantly struck down to the earth by stones falling from the sky. Then a deluge of hot water and flowing mud rose over the rim of the old crater, and poured down the mountain-sides, sweeping away trees and beasts and human bodies in its seething mass. At the same moment, stones and ashes and sand were projected to an enormous height into the air, and, as they fell, destroyed nearly every thing within a radius of more than twenty miles. A few villages, that were situated on high hills on the lower declivities of the mountain, strangely escaped the surrounding destruction by being above the streams of hot water and flowing mud, while most of the stones and ashes and sand that were thrown out passed completely over them, and destroyed many villages that were farther removed from the centre of this great eruption.

The thundering was first heard at half-past one o’clock. At four the extreme violence of the eruption was past; at five the sky began to grow clear once more, and the same sun that at noon had shed his life-giving light over this rich landscape, at evening was casting his rays over the same spot then changed into a scene of utter desolation. A second eruption followed within five days, and by that time more than twenty thousand persons had lost their lives.