Lets see how it goes on. Everyone can guess the main idea of the passage from the atlantic magazine:
We know that the effects of the stupendous volcanic eruption in the Strait of Sunda extended through many months and were exerted over a large area of surface. From the newspapers of the day we learned much of the horrors that attended this unusual convulsion, and of the disasters which followed. But as information is gathered and collated, it is possible to present an interesting summary of this great effort of nature.
The eruption was at Krakatoa, an island in the fair-way of the Strait of Sunda, about midway between Java and Sumatra. Twenty-six miles to the southward and westward was the village of Anjer, where were a light-house and signal-station for the many vessels passing through the strait.Krakatoa was but a small, uninhabited island, about five miles long and three miles wide. It had two elevations, of which the taller, called the Peak of Krakatoa, rose 2750 feet above the sea. On the adjacent land are volcanic cones; some active, some slumbering, and others dead.
It is recorded that Krakatoa itself was active in 1680, and that voyagers in the vicinity encountered in that year a great storm and an earthquake at sea, accompanied by most frightful thunders and cracklings. Mention was also made of a strong sulphur atmosphere and of large quantities of pumice floating on the sea. Since that time the island had been at rest, and was noted by travelers chiefly for the beauty of its tree-clad slopes, the first verdant spot to greet the eye after long weeks at sea.
So far as is known, the earliest indication of any subterranean disturbance was felt at Batavia, eighty miles distant, on the 20th of May, 1883; and it is a remarkable fact that while the commotion about to be described was taking place at Batavia, nothing unusual was noticed at Anjer, but twenty-five miles away, nor at Merak, thirty-five miles distant from Krakatoa, although from both places there is a clear outlook to that island.
In the forenoon of the 20th of May the inhabitants of Batavia were startled by a dull booming noise, followed by a violent rattling of doors and windows. Whether this proceeded from the air or from below was a matter of doubt, for unlike most earthquake shocks the quivering was only vertical. The director of the observatory in Batavia reported the next day that no increase of earth magnetism accompanied the tremblings, and that a suspended magnet with a registering apparatus gave no indications of the slightest horizontal oscillations. An instrument maker in the town stated that on a pendulum in his shop only vertical trillings were observable, at a time when the windows and glass doors were rattling in so violent a way as to render conversation a matter of no little difficulty. Nowhere do there seem to have been observed any shocks of a true or undulatory earthquake. Another curious circumstance was that at midday at some spots in the city no vibrations were perceived, while in the surrounding buildings they were distinctly experienced. It was a natural conclusion, however, that an alarming volcanic eruption had taken place; but it was impossible to localize the direction of the sounds, and at the observatory there were no instruments for making such determinations.
