Flash-lights from the Seven Seas

by William L. Stidger

"All I could see from where I stood
Was three tall mountains and a wood."

Only in this instance all I could see were three volcanos. And the one in the center, old Merapi was belching out a trail of black smoke. These three volcanos, take turns through the centuries. When one is working the other two rest. When one ceases its activity, one of the others takes up the thundering anthem and carries it on for a few years or centuries and then lapses into silence, having done its part. While we were there it was Merapi's turn to thunder and on this particular morning Merapi was busy before day-light.

For fifty miles along the horizon, a trail of black smoke swept like the trail of black smoke which a train leaves in its wake on a still day. There was not another cloud in the eastern skies. Nothing but that trail of black smoke as we stood on the top of Boroboedoer at dawn and watched.

Then something happened. It was, as if some magician had waved a magic wand back of the mountain. The rising sun was the magician. We saw its heralds spreading out, like great golden fan-ribs with the cone of the volcano, its direct center of convergence. Then before our astonished, our utterly bewildered, and our fascinated eyes, that old volcanic cone was changed to a cone of gold. Then the golden cone commenced to belch forth golden smoke. And finally the trail of smoke for fifty miles along the horizon became a trail of golden smoke.

This was a Flash-Light that literally burned its way into our memories to remain forever.

There is another Flash-Light Physical which has to do with another volcano which I mentioned in the preceding chapter. Bromo is its name. It is still there, down on the extreme eastern end of Java, unless in the meantime the old rascal has taken it into his demoniacal head to blow himself to pieces as he threatened to do the day we lay on our stomachs, holding on to the earth, with the sides trembling beneath us.

Old Bromo was well named. It reminds one of Bromo-Seltzer. I had heard of him long before I reached Java. I had heard of the Sand Plains down into the midst of whose silver whiteness he was set, like a great conical gem of dark purple by day and fire by night.

Travelers said "You must see Bromo! You must see Bromo! If you miss everything else see Bromo! It's the most completely satisfactory volcano in the world."

It was two o'clock in the morning when we started on little rugged Javanese ponies up Bromo's steep slopes.

At daybreak we reached the mile high cliff which looks down into the world-famous Sand Sea. It was a sea of white fog. I have seen the same thing at the Grand Canyon and in Yosemite looking down from the rims. I thought of these great American canyons as I looked down into the Bromo Sand Sea. By noon this was a great ten-mile long valley of silver sand which glittered in the sunlight like a great silver carpeted ballroom floor. Tourists from all over the world have thrilled to its strange beauty. Like the gown of some great and ancient queen this silver cloth lies there; or like some great silver rug of Oriental weaving it carpeted that valley floor at noon.