CHANGES IN OCEANIC REGIONS. 



375 



third in 1587, when an earthquake shook the island of St. George, and eighteen small 

 islets rose in the ocean near its shores. The last example in this locality, and the most 

 celebrated, occurred in the year 1811, when the temporary island of Sabrina rose from 

 the deep off the coast of St. Michael. A dangerous shoal was first thrown up from a 

 depth of two hundred and forty feet of water. This took place in February. On the 

 13th of June the island showed itself above the surface of the sea, and continued rapidly 

 to increase for several days, till it attained the height of three hundred feet, and was 

 about a mile in circumference. It had a beautiful crater, with an opening thirty feet 

 wide, from which hot water poured into the sea. In the month of October of the same 

 year the island began gradually to disappear, and by the end of February, 1812, no 

 trace of it was visible above the waves, though vapours occasionally rose from the spot. 

 Mr. Bakewell states, upon the authority of a person who visited the Azores in 1813, 

 that there was near five hundred feet of water at the place where Sabrina formerly had 

 stood. 



Barren Island, in the Indian Ocean, is one of the most remarkable volcanic islands 

 now in active existence ; the cone, situated nearly in the centre of the island, emits vast 



Barren Island. 



volumes of smoke, and showers of red-hot stones, some of which weigh three and four 

 tons, and are cast to a distance of some hundreds of yards beyond the base ; a scanty 

 vegetation finds a precarious existence on the outer ridges, often blasted by the violence 

 of the eruptions : it is about six leagues in circumference, and may be distinguished from 

 the rest of the Andaman Islands for a distance of thirty-six miles in clear weather ; the 

 base of the cone or crater is but very little higher than the level of the ocean, although 

 the cone itself rises abruptly to the height of 1800 feet ; it is surrounded by a wall of 

 nearly equal height, which drops almost perpendicularly into the sea. At a quarter of a 

 mile from the shore there is no bottom found at 150 fathoms. 



Among the Alentian isles, a group in the North Pacific, stretching from Asia to North 

 America, which consist of black masses of lava, rising perpendicularly from the sea, and 

 peering above the clouds, a new island arose in the year 1806, which has remained firm. 

 Its general form was that of an immense peak, studded with small conical hills, upwards 

 of four geographical miles in circumference. Another new isle was here produced in the 

 year 1814, which rose up to the height of three thousand feet, then slightly subsided, 

 and has firmly established itself as a member of the Alentian group. 



In the year 1783 an island was formed by elevation at the distance of seventy miles 



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