Page:Scidmore--Java the garden of the east.djvu/341

Rh golden drops far and wide from their fretted, honeycombed edges. There was always suggestion of the possibility of their suddenly shooting into the air like geysers, and deluging one with the column of molten gold; or of the soft filigree edges of the pools crumbling and precipitating one untimely into the lakelet of fire and brimstone. Steam jets roared and hissed from all parts of the quaking solfatara, and from the rumblings and strange underground noises one could understand the native legends of chained giants groaning inside of the mountain, and their name for Papandayang, "The Forge." The sulphur coolies stepped warily along the paths between the pools; our shoe-soles were not proof against the steam and scorch of the heaving ground beneath us; and carbonic-acid gas and sulphureted hydrogen were all that one could find to breathe down there on the crater's floor—the undoubted Guevo Upas, or "Valley of Poison."

It is said that one can see the shores both of the Indian Ocean and the Java Sea from the summit of Papandayang, which is seven thousand feet above their level. Although the skies were cloudy and doubtful around the horizon edges, we were willing to take the brilliant noonday sun overhead as augury, and attempt the climb. As there was no path beyond the crater's rest-sheds for the coolies to carry us in djoelies, we started on foot straight up the first steep slope of the crater's ragged wall, through tangles of bushes and the rank bamboo-grass. We drove our servant on ahead, and the poor indolent creature, cheated of his expected lounge after his arduous pony-ride up the mountain and his midday rice-feast, turned plaintive counte-