THE ISLAND

One of the smallest, but perhaps the most extraordinary, of the islands, is the recently famous Bali - a cluster of high volcanoes, their craters studded with serene lakes set in dark forests filled with screaming monkeys. The long green slopes of the volcanoes, deeply furrowed by ravines washed out by rushing rivers full of rapids and waterfalls, drop steadily to the sea without forming lowlands.

Just eight degrees south of the Equator, Bali has over two thousand square miles of extravagantly fertile lands, most of which are beautifully cultivated. Only a narrow strait, hardly two miles across, separates Bali from Java; here again the idea that the two islands were once joined and then separated is sustained by the legend of the great Javanese king who was obliged to banish his good-for-nothing son to Bali, then united to Java by a very narrow isthmus. The king accompanied his son to the narrowest point of the tongue of land; when the young prince had disappeared from sight, to further emphasize the separation, he drew a line with his finger across the sands. The waters met and Bali became an island.

The dangers lurking in the waters around the island suggest a possible reason why Bali remained obscure and unconquered until 1908. Besides the strong tidal currents and the great depths of the straits, the coasts are little indented and are constantly exposed to the full force of the monsoons; where they are not bordered by dangerous coral banks, they rise from the sea in steep cliffs. Anchorage is thus out of the question except far out to sea, and the Dutch have had to build an artificial port in Benua to afford a berth for small vessels.

One of the volcanoes, the Gunung Batur (5,633 feet) , is still active. In the centre of the old crater an enormous amphitheatre ten miles across by a mile in depth rises like a dark blister, the smoking cone of a more recent crater (see map) , its sides covered with the black lava spilled out into the great bowl of the older crater in the latest eruption. It is said that this lava has not yet cooled deep down, and when the rain water seeps through the cracks it turns into clouds of steam. Half-circling the new crater is the peaceful, misty lake Batur, its shores dotted with the ancient villages of the oldest present inhabitants of the island. In former times the prosperous village of Batur rose at the foot of the volcano, but today only the villages across the crater remain, those on the safe side of the lake. One day the Batur began to growl and in 1917 it burst into a violent eruption accompanied by earthquakes.

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