174 THE OCEAN. 



mind inconsistent with probability — that the state- 

 ments of the ancients may be literally- true ; that 

 by the action of an earthquake, of which we have 

 had instances in modern times, the island may have 

 been submerged, and that the Azores are the sum- 

 mits of the highest mountains. It seems somewhat 

 to confirm this opinion, that these islands are evi- 

 dently volcanic in their origin, and are very sub- 

 ject to earthquakes, — nay, the very phenomenon of 

 islands swallowed up by the sea has repeatedly oc- 

 curred here within historical record. It is true, that 

 in these instances the island itself was small, and 

 had been but recently raised by volcanic action; 

 but it does not seem necessary that in similar cases 

 there should be an exact parallelism, either in size 

 or duration. The last of these occurrences was so 

 remarkable on other accounts as to be well worthy of 

 a detailed description, which is given by an eye-wit- 

 ness, Captain Tillard, an officer of the British navy : 

 "Approaching the island of St. Michael's, on the 

 12th June, 1811, we occasionally observed, rising in 

 the horizon, two or three columns of smoke, such 

 as would have been occasioned by an action between 

 two ships, to which cause we universally attributed 

 its origin. This opinion was, however, in a very 

 short time changed, from the smoke increasing and 

 ascending in much larger bodies than could possibly 

 have been produced by such an event; and having 

 heard an account, prior to our sailing from Lisbon, 

 that in the preceding January or February a volcano 

 had burst out within the sea near St. Michael's, we 

 immediately concluded that the smoke we saw pro- 



