Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
Image not available - no digital rights
plays', wrote The Times .4 The dust was the pulverised mountain
floating silently around the earth, creating lurid and intense
sunsets and sunrises. The particles scattered the sun's light, dis-
persing the shorter blue/violet end of the spectrum and allowing
the longer red wavelengths to dominate. These beautiful effects
of volcano-produced light had not been experienced within living
memory, as the sunset effects of the post-Tambora months in
1816 were no longer within that span, except among observant
septuagenarians blessed by life and chance. None, however,
seems to have mentioned it.
The post-Krakatoa effects may well have been magnificent
in London, but as the London atmosphere was already heavily
polluted by industrial and domestic smoke, the Krakatoa erup-
tion cannot have had such a marked effect. London fogs had been
notorious at home and abroad for their filth, texture, smell and
danger since the early decades of the century. A French visitor
called London 'Brouillardopolis',5 and this was not because of
post-Krakatoa effects. Nor was it the reason that Claude Monet
'The Island of Krakatoa,
Strait of Sunda,
Submerged
during the Late
Eruption', from
Harper's Weekly (1883).
 
Search WWH ::




Custom Search