The Crater

"This was also written in the mid-19th century and it’s an adventure story, a bit like Robinson Crusoe . A chap called Mark Woolston sails across the Pacific and is shipwrecked. He lands on an island surrounded by coral reefs and it turns out to be volcanic. He uses the volcano to store fresh water and provisions and then the volcano erupts, forms a new vulcan’s peak, and he survives the eruption and climbs to the top of the volcano from where he can see passing ships and he is saved. It’s a rollicking good adventure story but it also tells us something about the volcanic origins of coral atolls, something that Charles Darwin wrote about in the Voyage of the Beagle. It was written around the same time that Melville wrote Moby Dick and these books are all of a piece. Americans were writing about the natural world. I think so. I think that’s the reason we visit them so much as tourists. Earthquakes are altogether different because there’s not as much to see, but a volcanic eruption is like a gigantic waterfall or a huge storm and it’s very attractive, a visible manifestation of the power of the earth. In all three of these books the volcano is almost a living creature that we love and admire. When I was writing my book about Krakatoa I grew very fond of it. I mean, it exploded and had a baby."