7& Mud Volcanoes on the Coast of Arracan. [jAjk 



contrasted with the dense marshy forests from which they ascend, is 

 said to have a singular effect, heightened by a few scattered plants of 

 the Tamarix indica, elsewhere found only in sandy deltas and islands 

 along the course of the great rivers, growing on their sides; on the 

 summit of each cone a spring of muddy water is found, through which 

 gas escapes in bubbles, a peculiarity which has procured for them the 

 name of mud volcanoes. These cones, although they excited no interest 

 when first described by Lieut. Foley*, are characteristics of the coasts 

 of Chili and Calabria, and are well known to result from some of the 

 most interesting and awful visitations to which the surface of the earth 

 is exposed. They are of a similar nature, but of much greater size 

 than the cones of earth which formed on the coast of Chili during the 

 great earthquake of 1822, where they are referred to fissures produced 

 in the granitic rocks through which water mixed with mud was thrown 

 up-j-. The alluvial plains of Calabria present similar cones of sand, in- 

 dicating the alternate rising and sinking of the ground. 



Sir W. Hamilton explains such phenomena by supposing the first 

 movement to have raised the fissured plain from below upwards, so that 

 the rivers and stagnant waters in bogs sank down, but when the ground 

 was returned with violence to its former position the mud was thrown up 

 in jets through fissures J. 



Near Kaeng in Rambree, Lieutenant Foley found at the foot of one 

 of these cones, masses resembling clink stone, of green color, very hard 

 and sonorous when struck, and he naturally concluded that they must 

 have been ejected from a volcanic vent. 



Two of the largest of the cones are situated on a ridge of sandstone 

 300 feet in height, about 3 miles from Kyouk Phyoo, the capital of the 

 island. From one of them called Nayadong, vapour and flame was 

 seen by the inhabitants of Kyouk Phyoo to issue to the height of several 

 hundred feet above the summit during the principal shock of the earth- 

 quake of the 26th August 1833. The phenomenon may have been 

 occasioned by the concussion of the earthquake bursting open some 

 new fissure from which a transitory stream of inflammable gas, such as 

 that which supplies the celebrated burning fountain of Chittagong may 

 have issued. 



The island of Chaduba adjoining Rambree is represented in most old 

 charts as a burning mountain, from which it may be alleged that early 

 surveyors witnessed its eruptions ; the higher ridges of neither of these 

 islands have been examined, but the shores of Chaduba, like those of 



• They were referred by some merely to the decomposition of iron pyrites. 

 f Lyell, 2, 232, 4th ed. + Lyell, 2, 278. 4th ed. 



