160 ■'■ ' 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 hifrhest mountains. It seems somewhat 

 to confirm this opinion, that these islands are evi- 

 dently volcanic in their origin, and are very subject 

 to earthquakes, — nay, the very phenomenon of islands 

 swallowed up by the sea has repeatedly occurred 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-witness, Captain 

 Tillard, an officer of the British na^y : " 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 proceeded from that cause, 



