And Then They Came

By davidbunch

Two months after the eruption R.D.M. Yerbeek visited Krakatoa and found no trace of life on the island, "where the ejected matter was so hot that the coolies danced on their bare feet." Then a miracle happened—the miracle of the rebirth of life. Four months after the eruption, a botanist found no plant life, but did find something alive— an almost microscopic spider, gallantly spinning its web where there was nothing to be caught. Much later, naturalists speculated on whether life of some kind might have survived in deep rock fissures— seeds, spores, worms, insect eggs, perhaps even snails and lizards—but there is no evidence that they did. That pioneering spider, it was concluded, drifted in on the wind. For years to come the evidences of life on Krakatoa could have been counted on the fingers of one hand. One spider in 1883. Three blades of grass in 1884. Nothing in 1885. Nothing in 1886. A few shoots of grass in 1887.

And then they came, the grasses, mosses, ferns and shrubs, the worms, ants, snakes and birds, in swelling streams, which converged on the island. In a few decades they restored the teeming life of the tropics They arrived by air—seeds dropped by birds on their flight over the barren land; spores, small caterpillars and ants carried by the wind; beetles, mosquitoes and butterflies winging their way over from Java and Sumatra. They arrived by water—eggs of worms and reptiles flung ashore with flotsam; snails, scorpions and praying mantises riding the waves on decayed tree trunks; large monitor lizards, pythons and crocodiles swimming across the narrows. Parasites clung to their bodies. Man brought rats. They appeared on Krakatoa in 1917, having arrived aboard a boat carrying visitors to the island. Plants and animals came over by accident, but there was nothing accidental about the sequence in which they established themselves. It was a rigid chronological pattern telescoping millennia into months.

Some forms of life had to be there first so that others could live. Birds may have rested on Krakatoa a few years after the eruption, but they could not stay, since there were no fruits, seeds or insects. For a while some forms prospered enormously through the absence of enemies and competitors. Around 1910, Krakatoa was overrun by swarms of ants; ten years later, when there were plenty of birds and reptiles, the ants had all but disappeared. The first few grass blades soon grew into a field that covered the whole island except its perpendicular cliffs. But by 1919 the first small clusters of trees had taken root, and by 1924 they had grown into a continuous forest.

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