For the next eight or nine weeks the eruption continued with great vigor, increasing in activity on August 21st, preparatory to its final great effort. On the evening of the 26th some violent explosions took place, audible at Batavia, eighty miles distant; and between 5 and 7 A. M. on the 27th there was a still more gigantic explosion, followed about 10 A. M. by a detonation so terrific as to be heard even in India, Ceylon, Manilla, and the west coast of Australia, over two thousand miles away. Following on these came a succession of enormous waves, which completely swept the shores of the strait, utterly destroying Anjer, Telok Betong, and numerous villages, the loss of life being officially estimated at over thirty-six thousand souls. The coasts and islands in the vicinity were buried under a layer of mud and ashes.
The effects of this eruption were felt all over the world. Ashes fell at Singapore, 519 miles distant, Bengkalis, 568 miles distant, and the Cocos Islands, 764 miles to the southwestward; and undulations of the sea were recorded at Ceylon, Aden, Mauritius, South Africa, Australia, and in the Pacific. A wave of atmospherical disturbance was also generated, which has been traced three times completely round the world, traveling at the speed of sound. Many months afterward pumice was cast ashore on Zanzibar Island and Madagascar, supposed to have drifted from the Strait of Sunda.
The height of the column of steam and smoke given off by the volcano is estimated at from nine to twelve miles,[9] the consequence being that large quantities of fine dust were discharged into the upper regions of the atmosphere, giving rise to those beautiful sunset effects observed all over the world for several months afterward. The amount of solid matter ejected has been computed at over four and a quarter cubic miles.
Such a convulsion has naturally greatly altered the features of the surrounding sea and islands. The northern portion of Krakatau has completely disappeared, and several banks and shoals have been formed between it and Bezee Island, rendering the passage between almost impracticable. It has not otherwise affected the navigation of Sunda Strait, and its activity has now ceased (1889)....
Krakatau Island, lying in the middle of Sunda Strait, has been reduced in size from thirteen to six square miles, the site of the northern part of the island now being covered by deep water, no bottom being obtained at 164 fathoms at one spot. The island is now three and a half miles in length, east and west, and two miles wide at its east end. Mount Radaka, its fine conical peak, which still remains, rising boldly up to the height of 2657 feet, may be seen at a considerable distance, and serves as a fairway mark for ships entering the strait from the westward. It is in latitude 6° 9′ S., longitude 105° 27′ E., and its northern side is now a sheer precipice about 2550 feet high.... The island was uninhabited, but visited occasionally by fishermen....
Verlaten Island has increased in size from about one and a half to four and a half square miles. Lang Island has altered somewhat in shape, but not much in size. The round islet named Polish Hat has disappeared, but another islet now lies three quarters of a mile west a half-mile from its south point, with deep water between.
Bezee or Tamarind Island, lying ten and a half miles north by east from Krakatau peak, has altered a little in shape, but not in size, and appears to be the northern limit of the volcanic disturbance.... Bezee Island formerly produced pepper.... The village was on the east side opposite Little Tamarind Island, but the volcanic eruption smothered the island with mud and ashes.
Although we traveled on the island through all the November weeks, we did not experience any of the sensational downpours promised for the beginning of the rainy season, nor the terrific thunderstorms warranted to rend the heavens at the turn of the monsoon, nor any inconvenience or disarrangement of plans through the first instalments of the annual precipitation. The black clouds of the Java Sea did not suddenly envelop our ship in such sheets of rain that the vessel was forced to lay to, the lookout in the bows unable to see ten feet ahead of him, and the double sail-cloth awnings over the decks serving no more purpose than so much gauze. The rain did not descend in a flood or cloud-burst’s fury at precisely three o’clock every afternoon, penetrating carriage-curtains and -aprons, filling the carriage-boxes like tanks, and saturating every garment and article. Nor any more did we play billiards by lightning, without lamps, like that British planter who eventually scared away a party of Americans by his account of thunderstorms in Java. This British resident assured the tourists that at his Preanger plantation the thunder-claps shook the house, rocked the furniture, and stopped clocks, and that he had often turned out the reeling lamps for safety’s sake, and continued his games of billiards by the lightning’s incessant, blinding green glare. And the Americans believed it, and remained away from Java—British humor and American credulity matched to equally surprising extremes.
There were gentle, intermittent drizzles and light showers on several days; many days when the gray skies sulked and seemed about to weep; but the only hard showers were at night. The one vaunted sensational, tropical downpour, with blue-and-green lightning’s illumination, made my last Batavian midnight memorable, and put me at last in line with my climatic expectations. Yet that was at the end of November, when the monsoon was supposed to have sent off its irregular fireworks and settled down to the fixed program of a three-o’clock shower every afternoon, in order to precipitate its annual eighty inches of rain.
Even the thermometer disappointed one in this land comprised between the parallels of 5° and 8° south of the equator. Not once in my stay did it register as great a heat as I have once seen it register in Sitka in July—94° Fahrenheit; but as the column of mercury is often small gage or warrant for one’s own sensations, he must believe, even if with mental reservations, that Batavia’s mean temperature was but 78.69° for twelve years, with a monthly mean range of but two degrees. If one has been out in the sun at that hour, he feels skeptical about Batavia’s annual average noonday temperature being but 83°, all of four degrees cooler than Samarang’s and Sourabaya’s average noon temperature. He may believe that the thermometer very seldom falls below 70° or rises above 90°, but a quality in the air, a weight and appreciable humidity, make Batavia’s mean, exhausting, lifeless 83° noondays the climax of one’s discomfort.