3-074-515 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

East Coast and Islands of the Straits of Sunda, with Anjer, a port of Java, 1883. '...no warnings or forebodings could have availed to check the devastation caused by the combined earthquake and seaquake that last week upheaved land and sea in the Straits of Sunda, the gateway of the China Sea, submerged the volcanic Island of Krakatoa, created more than a dozen volcanic craters around, and caused a great tidal wave that overwhelmed many flourishing towns in Java and Sumatra. The destruction of life and property by this appalling convulsion is at present conjectural, but there is reason to fear that its victims are to be reckoned by tens of thousands. Apparently, the huge wave that rushed upon the shores on either side was more destructive than the earthquake, and was felt with greater severity, because these volcanic and exceptionally fertile colonies of Holland are more densely populated than almost any other portion of the globe. The strait, a hundred miles long, which unites the Indian Ocean with the China Sea, has been rendered quite unsafe for navigation'. From "Illustrated London News", 1883.