a thick grove of cocoa-nut palms!

CHAPTER XXIX.

TELLS CHIEFLY OF THE WONDERFUL EFFECTS OF THIS ERUPTION ON THE WOULD AT
LARGE.

The great explosions of that morning had done more damage and had
achieved results more astounding than lies in the power of language
adequately to describe, or of history to parallel.

Let us take a glance at this subject in passing.

An inhabitant of Anjer--owner of a hotel, a ship-chandler's store, two
houses, and a dozen boats--went down to the beach about six on the
morning of that fateful 27th of August. He had naturally been impressed
by the night of the 26th, though, accustomed as he was to volcanic
eruptions, he felt no apprehensions as to the safety of the town. He
went to look to the moorings of his boats, leaving his family of seven
behind him. While engaged in this work he observed a wave of immense
size approaching. He leaped into one of his boats, which was caught up
by the wave and swept inland, carrying its owner there in safety. But
this was the wave that sealed the doom of the town and most of its
inhabitants, including the hotel-keeper's family and all that he
possessed.

This is one only out of thousands of cases of bereavement and
destruction.

A lighthouse-keeper was seated in his solitary watch-tower, speculating,
doubtless, on the probable continuance of such a violent outbreak, while
his family and mates--accustomed to sleep in the midst of elemental
war--were resting peacefully in the rooms below, when one of the mighty
waves suddenly appeared, thundered past, and swept the lighthouse with
all its inhabitants away.

This shows but one of the many disasters to lighthouses in Sunda
Straits.

A Dutch man-of-war--the _Berouw_--was lying at anchor in Lampong Bay,
fifty miles from Krakatoa. The great wave came, tore it from its
anchorage, and carried it--like the vessel of our friend David
Roy--nearly two miles inland!

Masses of coral of immense size and weight were carried four miles
inland by the same wave. The river at Anjer was choked up; the conduit
which used to carry water into the place was destroyed, and the town
itself was laid in ruins.

But these are only a few of the incidents of the great catastrophe. Who
can conceive, much less tell of, those terrible details of sudden death
and disaster to thousands of human beings, resulting from an eruption
which destroyed towns like Telok Betong, Anjer, Tyringin, etc., besides
numerous villages