THE ATLANTIC OCEAN. 1G3 



ing up to them a quantity of water-spouts, wliich 

 formed a most beautiful and striking addition to the 

 general appearance of the scene." 



In the course of a few hours, a crater had been 

 thrown up by tliese eruptions, to the heiglit of twenty 

 feet above the sea, and apparently three or four 

 hundred feet in diameter. Kepeated shocks of an 

 earthquake accompanied the explosion. The narrator 

 was obliged to leave the neighbourhood on the suc- 

 ceeding day, at which time the volcanic eruption 

 was seen from a distance to be still raging with 

 undiminished fury. About three weeks afterwards 

 he returned to the spot, and found all quiet, but 

 the newly-formed island had increased to a mile 

 in circumference, and the highest part appeared to 

 have an elevation of about two hundred and forty 

 feet. On landing, he found the place still smoking, 

 and the larger crater nearly full of water in a boiling 

 state, which was being discharged into the Ocean by 

 a stream about six yards across : this stream, close to 

 the edge of the sea, was so hot, as barely to admit 

 the momentary immersion of the finger.* On the 

 11th of October, in the same year, this island sank 

 beneath the Ocean from which it hnd emerged, 

 leaving a dangerous shoal in the neighbourhood, 

 thus realizing the traditionary fate of the island of 

 Atlantis. 



But lot us pursue our voyage. As we follow the 

 setting sun to his bod among the Indian islands of 

 the west, the tedium of our way across tlie trackless 

 waste is enlivened l)y thosi? cheerful little biids, 



* Trans. Koy. Soc, 1812. 

 ji 2 



