Show sum sumatra marvelous Mar aeo there are any mud volcanoes scattered throughout the world but there are few whose action is so regular and so characteristic as that of deapo in the island of sumatra su matra tills this marvelous volcano about feet in height was visited recently by a correspondent who thus describes de it all was quiet and placid and I 1 sat down a while to take in the details of a scene so novel a vast circular basin half a mile in diameter with rocky sides of sheer precipices displaying at places horizontal strata and at the bottom of this another smaller basin some feet in diameter filled to within about thirty or forty feet of its rim with a smoking substance like bur niehei silver which reflected the blue sky and every passing cloud we had sat thus for about ten or twelve minutes when I 1 noticed that the center of the white basin had become intensely black a and nd was scored with dark streaks this area gradually increased by steady scrutiny with my glass for it was difficult to make out what was silently eilent ly and slowly taking place I 1 at last discovered that the blackness marked the sides of a chasm that had formed in what I 1 now perceived the white burnished mirror to be a lake of seething mud the blackness iacre increased ased the lake was being engulfed A few minutes later a dull sullen roar was heard and I 1 had just time to conjecture within myself whence it proceeded when the whole lake heaved and rose in the air for some hundreds of feet n not ot as if violently ejected but with a calm majestic upheaval and then fell back upon itself with an awesome roar which reverberated round and round the vast cauldron cauldren caul dron and echoed from rocky wall to rocky wall like the surge of an angry sea and the immense volume of steam let loose from its prison house dissipated itself in the air the wave circles died away on the margin of the lake which resumed its burnished face and again reflected the blue sky and silence reigned again until another geyser had gathered force for another expiration thus all day long the lake was swallowed up and vomited forth once in every fifteen or twenty minutes |