til at length the fiery
torrent overcame, by its heat and pressure, this obstacle, and poured
down the mountain side with a frightful noise, which was heard for a
distance of more than fifty miles.[479]

The Kurile chain of islands constitutes the prolongation of the
Kamtschatka range, where a train of volcanic mountains, nine of which
are known to have been in eruption, trends in a southerly direction. The
line is then continued to the southwest in the great island of Jesso,
and again in Nipon, the principal of the Japanese group. It then extends
by Loo Choo and Formosa to the Philippine Islands, and thence by Sangir
and the northeastern extremity of Celebes to the Moluccas (see map, fig.
39). Afterwards it passes westward through Sumbawa to Java.

There are said to be thirty-eight considerable volcanoes in Java, some
of which are more than 10,000 feet high. They are remarkable for the
quantity of sulphur and sulphureous vapors which they discharge. They
rarely emit lava, but rivers of mud issue from them, like the moya of
the Andes of Quito. The memorable eruption of Galongoon, in 1822, will
be described in the twenty-fifth chapter. The crater of Taschem, at the
eastern extremity of Java, contains a lake strongly impregnated with
sulphuric acid, a quarter of a mile long, from which a river of acid
water issues, which supports no living creature, nor can fish live in
the sea near its confluence. There is an extinct crater near Batur,
called Guevo Upas, or the Valley of Poison, about half a mile in
circumference, which is justly an object of terror to the inhabitants of
the country. Every living being which penetrates into this valley falls
down dead, and the soil is covered with the carcasses of tigers, deer,
birds, and even the bones of men; all killed by the abundant emanations
of carbonic acid gas, by which the bottom of the valley is filled.

In another crater in this land of wonders, near the volcano of Talaga
Bodas, we learn from M. Reinwardt, that the sulphureous exhalations have
killed tigers, birds, and innumerable insects; and the soft parts of
these animals, such as the fibres, muscles, nails, hair, and skin,
are very well preserved, while the bones are corroded, and entirely
destroyed.

We learn from observations made in 1844, by Mr. Jukes, that a recent
tertiary formation composed of limestone and resembling the coral rock
of a fringing reef, clings to the flanks of all the volcanic islands
from the ea