344 Volcanoes in^ihes Bay of Bengal. 



man of 106, who remembered it when he was a lad of 16, 

 to have occurred about the year 1750.* Mr Piddington 

 suggests that it is not unlikely that it may have occui'red 

 simultaneously with the eruption at Pondicherry in 1757y^- 

 natives being proverbially inaccurate as to dates, — during the 

 general occurrence of violent earthquakes, when the sea 

 washed several times over the lower part of the island, and 

 then permanently retired as the land emerged. Captain B. 

 Smith thinks it likely to have occurred during the Chittagong 

 earthquake of 1762. Immense quantities of fish were found 

 on the recovered land, and the feasting which occurred on 

 these is still a favourite tradition in the island ; no rent 

 occurred in the earth, and no lives were lost or mischief 

 occasioned ; for more than half a century much of the soil 

 remained salt. The elevation has been greatest towards 

 the centre of the line examined, where it is 22 feet ; at the 

 termination it is 13 ; and at FouU Island 9. Regwan, lat. 

 18° 37' 30," just to the north of Cheduba, is marked by 

 three distinct risings,t each about 8 feet ; the outer portion 

 of the island was said to have been raised about 1760, most 

 likely at the same time with the others. The original island 

 contains two terraces, about 900 feet high ; the outer margin 

 is as yet barren, it consists generally of corals, shells, and 

 gravel, the rest is a level plain of rice fields. >(( r iiTtr)' 



In the adjoining island of Ramree or Rumbree, off Kyouk 

 Phyoo, there are some beautiful mud volcanoes, the cones of 

 which are almost all covered with luxuriant casuarina trees, 

 the only place where they are found in the neighbourhood. 

 The craters and expelled matter possess the same general 

 characteristics as those of Cheduba. J This was first de- 

 scribed; by^Lteutenftut 'Foleyiiin the 4th volume of the Asiatic 



* Mrs Somerville, Physical Geography, vol. i., p. 257, speaks of these as 

 the result of gradual upheaval, going on within the last 100 years. It appears 

 to have been the result of a sudden and instantaneous elevation, occurring just 

 a century ago. There is no evidence of any subsequent change of level having 

 occurred within this period along the shores of the Bay of Bengal. 



t Note of Lieutenant M. Volloh, R.N., to map of Regwan, Bl, As. Trans. 

 .Jolinston's Physical Atlas. ' ■ -""I.-- /••-'lii/ •,(■ .id;: .\{\.c.i^<Ma.ia\iial\^Wyvv\i':^ 



I ])r Spry, BI. As. Tran«'., 1841^ vdl.^.pp;Mft48jfiflff1 «nini^t«>^« no^ir^nihf'rT 



