The level ground at the base of the cone, widest on the southern side, is covered with tall bamboo grass and various kinds of low bushes. On the inner slopes of the crater, the south and east sides, which are of rocky formation, support a certain amount of small forest, in which we quickly noticed the absence of such tropical forms as palms, rattans and lianas, and of trees more than 60 or 70 feet high and 4 or 5 feet in diameter;[7] the remaining sides, composed mainly of volcanic ash, afford foothold only to a coarse tussocky plant growing in clumps on the loose black dust. We found these latter slopes not at all an attractive scene of operations, for the feet sank and slipped at every step, and raised at the same time clouds of fine black dust.
During the day the heat in the interior was extreme, for the sun's rays beat down upon, and were reflected from, the dark slopes, while the wall of the crater completely cut off any sea breeze. We did not ascend the cone, for our stay was to be short, and we wished to investigate the fauna as fully as possible; but from reports of the visits paid to the island once every three or four years from Port Blair, it would seem that the slight signs of activity still existent consist of an issue of steam and the continued sublimation of sulphur; while of the two cones which form the top, one is cold, and already bamboo grass and ferns are beginning to clothe the entire summit. There is ample proof in those details which have been recorded of the island during the last century that the volcano is rapidly becoming quiescent, and is indeed, perhaps verging on a condition of extinction, as has long been the case with Narkondam.
Captain Blair, who passed near in 1795, writes of enormous volumes of smoke and frequent showers of red-hot stones. "Some were of a size to weigh three or four tons, and had been thrown some hundred yards past the foot of the cone. There were two or three eruptions while we were close to it; several of the red-hot stones rolled down the sides of the cone and bounded a considerable way beyond us.... Those parts of the island that are distant from the volcano are thinly covered with withered shrubs and blasted trees."
A few years later Horsburgh records an explosion every ten minutes, and a fire of considerable extent burning on the eastern side of the crater. In the next thirty years, the subterranean forces had considerably diminished in activity, and at the end of that period only volumes of white smoke with no flame were to be seen. Drs Mouat and Liebig, who visited the island within a few months of each other in 1857, write respectively of volumes of dark smoke, and clouds of hot, watery vapour. In 1866, a whitish vapour was emitted from several deep fissures, and about 1890, steam was seen to be issuing at the top from a sulphur-bed, which was liquid and pasty, and a new jet was coming from a lump on the sloping side of the cone; while the sole evidence of activity now to be observed is the deposition of sulphur, and an escape of steam that often condenses on the surface rocks.
Concerning the fauna of the island, birds—inside the crater—were not numerous: commonest were a little white-eye (Zosterops palpebrosa), and the Indian cuckoo, which swarmed everywhere, its loud cries, "ko-el, ko-el," resounding in all directions. The only mammals other than the goats were rats, which, while of one species (Mus atratus, sp. nov.), afford a rather curious example of range of colouring, for while many were of the usual brown shade, a great number were of a glossy coal-black, much resembling in tint the lava and volcanic dust in which they made their homes. The island is everywhere riddled with their holes, but though so numerous, the land-crabs may fairly claim to divide the place with them. Trapping for rats was a failure, for no sooner was one caught than it would be torn to pieces by the crabs, who in other instances would spring the trap long before the others were attracted by the bait.
Altogether we landed four times, but soon found that very little variety was to be obtained: the sea, however, swarmed with fish, and many fine catches of rock-cod, trigger-fish, and mullet, 20 to 70 lbs. in weight, were made by the crew.
Late one evening we left Barren Island, and with a fair though moderate breeze, which, however, soon drew round against us, covered the 36 miles to the Andamans proper, and anchored before noon next day in the Kwang-tung Juru.
From a distance, all the islands of the Archipelago appear to rise to about the same height,—between 500 and 600 feet—presenting a fairly level sky-line from north to south, and with the exception of East Island, which shows a white sandy beach, all seem fringed with thickets of mangroves.
The strait, which is about a mile wide, separates the islands of John and Henry Lawrence, and with its smooth water and low banks, on which the veil of mangrove and jungle, extending to the water's edge, is broken at short intervals by small bluffs of pale clay shale, might easily, but for its brilliant blue colour, be mistaken for a quiet river.
We landed in the afternoon on the eastern shore, and at once set to work cutting a path, for here was the densest kind of Andaman jungle, and although within it one comes across little patches where the bush is fairly open, it is, on the whole, a wild tangled mass of trunks and branches, bound together by countless ropes of creeping bamboo and thorny rattan.