Immense quantities of ashes fell over the surrounding country, or were carried towards Java to the west a distance of 300 miles, while on the north they were carried towards Celebes for a distance of 217 miles. Cinders covered the ocean towards the west two feet thick and several miles in length, so that ships could hardly make their way through them. The darkness in Java produced by the dense ash cloud was greater than had ever before been experienced with the single exception of the great eruption of Krakatoa. A considerable quantity of this volcanic dust was carried to the islands of Amboyna and Banda, the last named island being at a distance of 800 miles east of the volcano. This eruption of Sumbawa was attended by great lava streams that covered vast areas of the land and afterwards poured into the sea. As in the case of the explosive eruption of Krakatoa great waves were produced in the ocean all along the coasts of Sumbawa, and surrounding islands. The sea suddenly rose from two to twelve feet. A great wave rushed up the mouths of the rivers, and at the town of Tomboro, on the west side of Sumbawa, an area of land was sunk in the waters and remained permanently covered by eighteen feet of water. The most important of the still active volcanoes of Japan is Assamayna. This mountain was in terrible eruption during the autumn of 1783, when dense showers of ashes thrown out of the crater darkened the sky, turning the day into night, and, falling on the cultivated fields around the mountain, changed them into deserts. During the eruption some forty-eight villages were destroyed by showers of ashes and red hot stones and thousands of the inhabitants were either killed directly by the stones and ashes, or died from starvation, since their fields were covered with ashes for miles around to a depth of from two and a half to five feet. Another terrible eruption in Japan was in the volcanic mountain of Wunzen, or Onzen-Gatake. This occurred during 1791-93. During the last eruption of this volcano, 53,000 people lost their lives, either by reason of the eruption of the volcano, or by huge waves set up in the ocean by an earthquake. CHAPTER XIII JORULLO, A YOUNG VOLCANIC MOUNTAIN You must not suppose that when we speak of Jorullo as a young volcanic mountain that we mean young in the sense that you or I might be called young, but young as regards mountains; for Jorullo, now a great mountain range, had no existence before the year 1759, and that would make the mountain a little less than 150 years old, which so far as mountains are concerned may properly be regarded as quite young. The story of Jorullo is very interesting, and affords an excellent example of the great scale on which modern volcanic eruptions take place during historical times.