254 LIFE IN JAVA.
with a variety of leaves and beautiful flowers gracefully hanging on their slender stems. The air, which we found cool at Bandong (two thou- sand feet above the level of the sea), began now, as we neared the summit of the mountain, to grow chilly.
Issuing out of the sombre shade formed by the trees along the whole route up the mountain, we came suddenly on the ridge of the Kawa-opus crater, which the ^landoer told us was a mile in circumference, and seven hundred feet deep. A large lake, the water of which is yellow, bubbles at the bottom ; the vapour which rises from it ascend- ing in dense clouds above its surface. Trees and shrubs grow on the sides of the precipices, soften- ing the otherwise sterile aspect of the place. Those, however, which have imprudently sprung up near the margin of the lake, are either burnt up, leafless, or withering.
Separated by a shelving ridge, we found on the
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