The surface is strangely corrugated or ridged, like the sea-sand at ebb of tide;
and the whole landscape is as full of gloom as the waste of the African Sahara.
Like many other volcanoes, the Bromok is a truncated cone. From one of its
sides project numerous irregular masses, or mounds of mud and sand, incrusted
in a baked clay like red lava. Some of these have been largely reduced in size by
the heavy tropical rains, which have ploughed deep broad fissures in the Sandy
Sea; while others, still supplied with liquid matter from the volcano, are
encroaching on the Dasar, and covering so much of it as lies within the more
immediate neighbourhood of the crater. Large blocks of lime and limestone lie
embedded in these mounds; also huge black stones veined like marble and
glittering like granite. These, as well as the scoriæ which abound in every
direction, were products, it is supposed, of the last eruption of the Bromok.
Climbing to the summit of the ridge, and looking down into the abyss of the
crater, the traveller at first is tempted to suppose that before him lies one of the
“circles” of Dante’s mediæval Inferno. A yawning pit in the centre belches dense
volumes of sulphureous smoke, accompanied by terrific sounds, like groans and
shrieks and yells. The inner crater forms a large basin, about 350 feet in
diameter, with irregular broken sides, descending to a depth of fully 250 feet.
The sides, as well as the bottom, are encrusted with deposits of yellow
sulphureous matter.
The ceremony of the benediction of this dread volcano takes place two or three
times a year; it is not without its picturesque details. Groups of pilgrims are
scattered about the Sandy Sea; some eating, others praying; some singing, others
laughing, talking, chaffering. Men are selling, and finding a ready market for,
amulets, charms, and volcanic stones, which, in language as extravagant as that
of the European proprietor of a patent pill, they declare to be sovereign remedies
for every human malady. Provisions of all kinds are on sale, and lie exposed
upon roughly constructed stands, resembling those which are seen at English
fairs; a plank or two, supported on a couple of stone trestles. “Wodonos and
Mantries”—the Javanese nobles—parade up and down in gay attire, their
burnished krisses glittering amidst the folds of their sarong. Old men and old
women, who have come to pay their last homage to the shrine, totter along
feebly; watching with delight, however, the frolics of their grandchildren as they
scamper about in unchecked glee.
At one part of the Sandy Sea twenty mats are ranged in a row, and upon each a
young priest kneels, having before him a box of myrrh, frankincense, aloes, and