232 SAND-BURSTS. [CHAP. XXXIIL 



undulating ground happened to burst immediately 

 beneath them. He also told me that circular cavities, 

 called sink-holes, were formed where the principal 

 fountains of mud and water were thrown up. 



Hearing that some of these cavities still existed 

 near the town, I went to see one of them, three 

 quarters of a mile to the westward. There I found 

 a nearly circular hollow, ten yards wide, and five feet 

 deep, with a smaller one near it, and I observed, 

 scattered about over the surrounding level ground, 

 fragments of black bituminous shale, with much 

 white sand. Within a distance of a few hundred 

 yards, were five more of these &quot; sand-bursts,&quot; or 

 &amp;lt;( sand-blows,&quot; as they are sometimes termed here, 

 and, rather more than a mile farther west, near the 

 house of Mr. Savors, my guide pointed out to me 

 what he called &quot; the sink-hole where the negro was 

 drowned.&quot; It is a striking object, interrupting the 

 regularity of a flat plain, the sides very steep, and 

 twenty-eight feet deep from the top to the water s 

 edge. The water now standing in the bottom is 

 said to have been originally very deep, but has grown 

 shallow by the washing in of sand, and the crum 

 bling of the bank caused by the feet of cattle coming 

 to drink. I was assured that many waggon loads of 

 matter were cast up out of this hollow, and the 

 quantity must have been considerable to account for 

 the void ; yet the pieces of lignite, and the quantity 

 of sand now heaped on the level plain near its 

 borders, would not suffice to fill one-tenth part of the 

 cavity. Perhaps a part of the ejected substance may 

 have been swallowed up again, and the rest may have 



