Volcanoes in the Bay of Bengal. 33 



within the human, perhaps even the historic, period.* The 

 Shum Shum range, which forms about half the wall of the 

 crater, reaches an altitude of about 1760 feet. There is a 

 huge crack or slip which cuts above a third off the eastern 

 side of the volcano, and through a portion of this, constitut- 

 ing a narrow gorge or pass ten feet wide, and twenty or thirty 

 high, the road from Steamer Point enters the crater and 

 leads to the cantonments. Dr J. P. Malcolmson supposes 

 this to have been the remains of the latest great eruption, of 

 which the effects are chiefly manifest on the table-land on the 

 eastern buttress of Shum Shum. By this the ancient crater 

 was shattered nearly through its centre from the northern 

 to the southern pass, breaking into pieces, and separating 

 the whole of the eastern side, of the edge of which Sheera 

 Island is a fragment ; and in these views I concur. (Lond. 

 As. Trans., 1846). On the one side of this which remains, 

 the wall of the crater subsides from 1700 to 600 feet, and 

 then breaks away altogether. The reft probably occurred 

 when the side of the crater was blown out and demolished. 

 The walls of the crater, as now existing, w 7 hen seen from the 

 cantonments, present the most magnificent view that can be 

 imagined ; one semicircular precipice, five miles in circuit, 

 ascends some 1776 feet from the plain. It is, in most cases, 

 perpendicular. The cliff is of a rusty dark-brown colour, and 

 full of caverns and recesses, like the altar-screen of a Gothic 

 cathedral. Great streams of lava may be observed from 

 point to point, as if the fiery cataract had been arrested in 

 its progress and congealed as it flowed from the lesser rents 

 of the principal crater. On many parts of the rock, 500 feet 

 above the level of the sea, — to the level of Shum Shum so far 

 as I know, but the altitude just named is all to which I have 

 examined it, — great masses of volcanic ashes are strewed 

 amongst the crevices of the rocks, these generally abounding, 

 as does the surface all around, with sea-shells in a state of 

 great decay, to all appearance borne up by the volcano on 

 its last emergence from the sea. 



* See Report of the Society of Civil Engineers, May 20, 1851. Also Miss 

 Fanny Corbeaux's Letters; Athenaeum, June 28, 1851. 



VOL. LIII. NO. CV. — JULY 1852. C 



