THE ATLANTIC OCEAN. 177 
zontal, and drawing up to them a quantity of water- 
spouts, which 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 these eruptions, to the height of 
twenty feet above the sea, and apparently three or 
four hundred feet in diameter. Repeated shocks of 
an earthquake accompanied the explosion. The 
narrator was obliged to leave the neighbourhood 
on the succeeding day, at which time the volcanic 
eruption was seen from a distance to be still raging 
with undiminished fury. About three weeks after- 
wards 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 had emerged, 
leaving a dangerous shoal in the neighbourhood, 
thus realizing the traditionary fate of the island of 
Atlantis. 
But let us pursue our voyage. As we follow the 
setting sun to his bed among the Indian islands of 
the west, the tedium of our way across the trackless 
* Trans. Roy. Soc. 1812. 
12 
