Page:Scidmore--Java the garden of the east.djvu/350

328 were laid on it and men walked even a mile to shore, they say.

A Dutch scientific commission investigated and collected reports upon the phenomenal events, and its report, "Krakatau," edited by R. D. M. Verbeek, the eminent geologist and director of mines to the Dutch government, was published at Batavia in 1885, in a quarto volume of 500 pages, in Dutch and French editions, accompanied by charts and an atlas of colored plates that make clear the whole course of the spectacular phenomena.

The Royal Society of Great Britain appointed a "Krakatoa Committee," composed of thirteen of its most eminent geologists, meteorologists, seismists, and specialists in such lines, to collect data concerning this most remarkable eruption of the century, and its report, a quarto volume of 475 pages, edited by G. J. Symons, and published in London in 1888, embodies the result of their inquiries.

M. René Breon's report to the French Minister of Public Instruction was published by his government, and he contributed papers to "La Nature," in the April and May numbers for the year 1885. Mr. H. O. Forbes, the naturalist, was in Batavia in the first weeks of Krakatau's activity, and the record of his excursion to the island and his observations was read to the Royal Geographic Society, and afterward published in vol. vi. of "Proceedings" (1884, pp. 129, 142).

The many official reports and accounts of the Krakatau eruption are best epitomized in Findlay's "Sailing Directory for the Indian Archipelago and China" (p. 78):