In the first place, it is a fact, testified to by some of the best-known men of science, that the shock of the explosion extended appreciably right round the world, and seventeen miles, (some say even higher!) up into the heavens.
Mr Verbeek, in his treatise on this subject, estimates that a cubic mile of Krakatoa was propelled in the form of the finest dust into the higher regions of the atmosphere—probably about thirty miles! The dust thus sent into the sky was of “ultra-microscopic fineness,” and it travelled round and round the world in a westerly direction, producing those extraordinary sunsets and gorgeous effects and afterglows which became visible in the British Isles in the month of November following the eruption; and the mighty waves which caused such destruction in the vicinity of Sunda Straits travelled—not once, but at least—six times round the globe, as was proved by trustworthy and independent observations of tide-gauges and barometers made and recorded at the same time in nearly all lands—including our own.
Other volcanoes, it is said by those who have a right to speak in regard to such matters, have ejected more “stuff,” but not one has equalled Krakatoa in the intensity of its explosions, the appalling results of the sea-waves, the wonderful effects in the sky, and the almost miraculous nature of the sounds.
Seated on a log under a palm-tree in Batavia, on that momentous morning of the 27th, was a sailor who had been left behind sick by Captain Roy when he went on his rather Quixotic trip to the Keeling Islands. He was a somewhat delicate son of the sea. Want of self-restraint was his complaint—leading to a surfeit of fruit and other things, which terminated in a severe fit of indigestion and indisposition to life in general. He was smoking—that being a sovereign and infallible cure for indigestion and all other ills that flesh is heir to, as every one knows!
“I say, old man,” he inquired, with that cheerful tone and air which usually accompanies incapacity for food. “Do it always rain ashes here?”
The old man whom he addressed was a veteran Malay seaman.
“No,” replied the Malay, “sometimes it rain mud—hot mud.”
“Do it? Oh! well—anything for variety, I s’pose,” returned the sailor, with a growl which had reference to internal disarrangements.
“Is it often as dark as this in the daytime, an’ is the sun usually green?” he asked carelessly, more for the sake of distracting the mind from other matters than for the desire of knowledge.
“Sometime it’s more darker,” replied the old man. “I’ve seed it so dark that you couldn’t see how awful dark it was.”