tators seemed unable
to find language adequately to describe them. Listen to a German
observer's remarks on the subject:--

"The display of November 29th was the grandest and most manifold. I
give a description as exactly as possible, for its overwhelming
magnificence still presents itself to me as if it had been yesterday.
When the sun had set about a quarter of an hour there was not much
afterglow, but I had observed a remarkably yellow bow in the south,
about 10 degrees above the horizon. In about ten minutes more this arc
rose pretty quickly, extended itself all over the east and up to and
beyond the zenith. The sailors declared, `Sir, that is the Northern
Lights.' I thought I had never seen Northern Lights in greater
splendour. After five minutes more the light had faded, though not
vanished, in the east and south, and the finest purple-red rose up in
the south-west; one could imagine one's-self in Fairyland."

All this, and a great deal more, was caused by the dust of Krakatoa!

"But how--how--why?" exclaims an impatient and puzzled reader.

"Ay--there's the rub." Rubbing, by the way, may have had something to
do with it. At all events we are safe to say that whatever there was of
electricity in the matter resulted from friction.

Here is what the men of science say--as far as we can gather and
condense.

The fine dust blown out of Krakatoa was found, under the microscope, to
consist of excessively thin, transparent plates or irregular specks of
pumice--which inconceivably minute fragments were caused by enormous
steam pressure in the interior and the sudden expansion of the masses
blown out into the atmosphere. Of this glassy dust, that which was
blown into the regions beyond the clouds must have been much finer even
than that which was examined. These glass fragments were said by Dr
Flugel to contain either innumerable air-bubbles or minute needle-like
crystals, or both. Small though these vesicles were when ejected from
the volcano, they would become still smaller by bursting when they
suddenly reached a much lower pressure of atmosphere at a great height.
Some of them, however, owing to tenacity of material and other causes,
might have failed to burst and would remain floating in the upper air as
perfect microscopic glass balloons. Thus the dust was a mass of
particles of every conceivable shape, and so fine that no watches,
boxes, or instruments were tight enough to exclude from their interi