VOLCANOES OF JAVA.

Taranaki Daily News, 10 September 1919, Page 10

VOLCANOES OF JAVA.

TIIE RECENT ERUPTION

DENSELY POPULATED COUNTRY

The recent eruption of the volcano of Klut, on the Island of .lava, and its destruction of many lives, draws attention once more to this section of the globe, where the natural forces of the earth's interior still show signs of youth. Nowhere on the earth is there a region of equal size which has suffered so much from volcanic eruptions. There are no volcanoes on either Borneo or New Guinea, but the line of the active and quiescent peaks of to-day stretches through Sumatra and .lava, then through the smalle rislands to the ea'st of .lava, up through Celebes and the Philippines, and into Japan. A similar curve of volcanic centres can be traced down the opposite border of the Pacific, beginning with Alaska, then through the Western United States, Mexico, Central America, and along the Andes, in South America, gigantic horseshoe of volcanoes, are scatOut in the Pacific, in the centre of this tered other groups, notably that in the Hawaiian Islands.

Through .lava itself the chain of these volcanic mountains runs the 660 miles of its length. Over fifty of these peaks range from 2000 to 3000 feet to over 12,000 feet in height, while half of them are active or semi-active at the present time. Geologists, however, usually attribute activity to only fourteen of them. This chain of mountains, many of them capped with great clouds of vapor or illuminated with columns of fire, lends a sombre aspect to the rare tropical beauty of Javanese scenery.

LIVING UP TO ITS NAME.

The Klut (or Kloet, Kalut, Keloet, according to ona's (system of orthography) (".in hardly be classed among the more majestic mountains of the Javanese range, since its height is only about, 5300 feet. However, it lives up to its 'name, which means the "broom," as its terrible eruptions have so often swept the region about it. The natives of Kediri, the regency in south-eastern .Java where the Klut is located, and, in fact, the Javanese throughout the eastern end of the island, look upon the mountain with a fear out of all proportion to its size. The Klut Ims three craters, although but one is active. About 3800 feet up the mountain is a lake of hot water, at about SMeg. F., fully half a mile in diameter.

Close by the Klut are other active volcanoes, Kawi and Ardjuno the latter towering to height of over 10,000 feet. Just cast of these are the Bromo, Semeru (the highest mountain in Java, 12300 feet), Lamongan', and Rating, causing this region of Eastern Java to be one o*' the greatest volcanic centres on the earth.

The Javanese have a legend that all the active volcanoes of the island are divided into groups of three, which, by some secret power, work in shifts, two resting while the other, whose turn it is, rumbles and roars and casts forth The Bromo and Semeru are two of such its stones and ashes, its smoke and fire, a group. The former is, perhaps, the .most interesting for the tourist to visit, as its activitie sare comparatively mild and its unique situation is superb in its awe-nspiring grandeur. The Bromo is hut 700 feet in height, and is one of a group of four cones, of which it alone gives any evidence of subterranean connections. These four cones, however, have risen in some recent geologic period out of the floor of a far larger crater, now extinct.

This crater floor, or San Sea, as it is called, is three and a half miles in diameter, is (1800 feet above sea level, and has a rim surrounding it that averages 1000 feet in height. Such a tremendous crater, geologists tell us, could have been caused only by an upheaval ,of nature's forces, far back in the dim ages of the world, such as it is impossible for us to conceive. Then it was that the whole top of this huge mountain was rent asunder.

THE LOSS OF LIFE.

The loss of life from many of the volcanic disturbances in Java, as well as the reported loss resulting from the recent eruption of Klut, place them among the more serious of the world's disasters, In a country, however, that is at the same time so thickly populated and so covered with death-dealing mountains, the wonder is that far greater number of people are not destroyed. Out of 48,000,000 people' dwelling in the Malay Archipelago. 3(1.000,000 live in Java alone, making it the most densely populated country on the globe. The Javanese are an agricultural people, both lovers and tillers of the soil. There are but lialf-adozen cities in this vast population which have over 50,000 inhabitants, and the largest of all Surabaya, has not more than 200,000 The people live in villages of from •">() to 500. with an occasional larger town, so that there are practically no congested population centres clustered at the bases of the mountains like Napes at Vesuvius or St. Pierre at Mont Pelce.