. Java and her neighbours; a traveller's notes in Java Celebes, the Moluccas and Sumatra . its strangegrandeur to a degree unapproached by any otherlandscape that I, at least, have ever seen. Hun-dreds of feet below is a valley carpeted with grey-black sand; a grey-green hill, in form a perfecttruncated cone, rises abruptly from the middle ofthis valley floor; behind, and a little to the left ofthis hill, is a bare, grey, smoking crater, with steep,serrated walls, and in rear of this, to the right,ridge after ridge of sharply indented hills or craterrims of greyish purple. Far off to the right
. Java and her neighbours; a traveller's notes in Java Celebes, the Moluccas and Sumatra . its strangegrandeur to a degree unapproached by any otherlandscape that I, at least, have ever seen. Hun-dreds of feet below is a valley carpeted with grey-black sand; a grey-green hill, in form a perfecttruncated cone, rises abruptly from the middle ofthis valley floor; behind, and a little to the left ofthis hill, is a bare, grey, smoking crater, with steep,serrated walls, and in rear of this, to the right,ridge after ridge of sharply indented hills or craterrims of greyish purple. Far off to the right, tower-ing above all else, and pouring a column of vapourinto the air from a height of over 12,000 feet,rises, in stately grandeur, a magnificent, greypyramid of faultless lines, the highest and grandestof all the giant volcanoes of Java. The great sand sea below is the Dessar, theremaining portion of the floor of a huge craterof former ages, now so broken up as to be hardlyrecognizable, but the north walls of which were onceformed by the Moenggal, where we stand, and The native IN THE TENGGER MTS. 191 the south walls by the Ider-Ider, opposite, acrossthe sand sea. The overgrown cone with sidesdeeply ribbed with water lines is the extinctvolcano Batok, and the active, half-hidden craterbehind Batok is Bromo, the object of Tenggriveneration and at one time, it is said, of humansacrifice. The great mountain in the far distance,whose steady smoke seems truly the smoke of asacrificial fire rising on a stately altar in perpetualreverence and worship of the great creator of thisimpressive scene, is Smeroe, ruthless destroyer ofhuman life and habitations. The grim grandeur and uncanny beauty of thisstrange landscape are bewildering. There isprobably no more extraordinary panorama ofvolcanic scenery anywhere, unless perhaps inIceland, where it seems hardly possible to behevethat the colouring can be as remarkable as herein the light of the tropical sun. There is such afantastic
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