[Illustration: CHAMBERS’S JOURNAL OF POPULAR LITERATURE, SCIENCE, AND ART Fifth Series ESTABLISHED BY WILLIAM AND ROBERT CHAMBERS, 1832 CONDUCTED BY R. CHAMBERS (SECUNDUS) NO. 45.—VOL. I. SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 8, 1884. PRICE 1½_d._] THE STORY OF A VAST EXPLOSION. The greatest physical convulsion of recent times occurred on the morning of the 27th of August last year, the scene of the catastrophe being a small island in the Sunda Straits, which separate Sumatra and Java. It is a region which there is much reason to regard as one of the intensest foci of volcanic activity on the earth’s surface. The main facts connected with this event, although slow in coming to hand, are now fairly within the records of science. Krakatoa, the volcanic island which a year or two ago was seven miles long by five broad, is about thirty miles from the Java coast. When surveyed in 1868-69, the island was found to be clothed from base to summit with a luxuriant growth of forest and tropical vegetation, but uninhabited. A few weeks prior to the eruption, the volcano, which had been dormant for two centuries, gave signs of an awakening. On the 20th of May several shocks, accompanied by loud explosions and hollow reverberations, startled the inhabitants of the towns of Batavia and Buitenzorg, about ninety miles distant.[1] These disturbances continued for the next three months with more or less activity. On the 11th and 18th of August the energy of the volcano increased, and there were symptoms of a crisis. On the 26th and the night following, several eruptions took place, until the climax was reached on the following morning. The submarine base of the mountain then seems, according to all available evidence, to have literally ‘caved in.’ This was apparently accompanied by an influx of the sea into the molten interior, the instantaneous development of superheated steam, and then an explosion which, for its colossal energy, is unparalleled in the annals of volcanic outbreaks.