1841.] Report on the Island of Cftedvoba. 435 



all the rocks of the western coast distinctly points out the limit of the 

 present high water. On Flat Island was subsequently found three dis- 

 tinct beaches, and the coral found on the different extents of the Island 

 clearly proclaimed in their relative states of decomposition, the difference 

 of their periods of exposure, 



The external and more apparent means by which these great changes 

 are effected, are as yet known, I believe, quite peculiar, and exhibit features 

 which may be valuable in assisting investigation into the immediate 

 causes of volcanic violence. 



Every one of the mud volcanoes of Chedooba were visited, and examined 

 as well as those of the neighbouring Islands, south of it, and on none with 

 strictest search could be found any traces of direct fire, or of those peculiar 

 formations produced by that agent, gas alone seems to be the one imme- 

 diately occasioning these strange exceptions to the general character of 

 volcanoes. It is no doubt inflammable gas, and the light given by some of 

 them in activity has been so great as to enable a book to be read by it 

 at a distance of 9 miles, as was credibly related to me as having occurred 

 at the last eruption of the large Volcano of Meugbreng, the largest on the 

 Island: that heat is present in the more recent ones, I found it myself 

 to be the case, in one examined on Ramree, where the mud brought up on a 

 bamboo from, 17 feet in depth, shewed a temperature of 92° 20' above that 

 of the atmosphere. But a white stone like chalk found on all the large 

 volcanoes, which was considered as the common greenish sandstone 

 discolored by heat, was the only substance found, which exhibited a 

 trace of no intense heat, and in this case the abstraction of color alone 

 was effected without the least change of composition or form. The 

 large volcanoes of Chedooba are four in number, they «re detached 

 mounds rather than cones, varying from 100 to 1,000 feet above the level 

 of the sea, composed of a stiff grey clay with large quantities of singu- 

 lar fragments of stone, their sides much cut up by the effects of rain, 

 their summits quite bare, and from 240 to 50 yards in diameter; on these 

 are disposed cones of stiff clay from a few inches to 4 feet in height, 

 and the same variety of dimensions, in diameter. These are hard on the 

 outside, but filled half way up with a thick well mixed mud, which every 

 now and then exudes from a hole at the sides or summit*, at the bursting 

 of a bubble of gas which occurs every 3 or 4 minutes. There are two 

 Other volcanoes of small dimensions, and but little elevated above the 

 plains where they are found to exist ; they are composed of the same 



* The readers of the Journal will be struck with the similarity of the description to 

 that of the mud pools at Hinglaj — As, Soc. Jour. No. 94. 



3 I 



