190 
Records of the Geological Survey of India. 
[voL. XI. 
Tile evidences of recent elevation, visible along the coast in many parts of 
these islands, are patent at a glance. The southern 
ecent e eva ion. portion of Bound Island is occupied by a little 
rocky table-land 100 or 150 feet high, and the remainder by a plain elevated 
but a few feet above the sea. A portion of the latter is composed of rounded 
pebbles and boulders of rock, lumps of coral, sand and broken shells— 
a raised sea-beach. The remainder Is an alluvial flat, formerly doubtless a man¬ 
grove swamp, but now occupied by rice-fields, amongst which are some large 
rocks with marine shells still adhering to them. At the northern end of 
the island there is a detached rock on the beach which strikingly illustrates 
the elevation, crowned, as it is, by an aggregated mass of marine shells, the 
base of which is about six feet above the j)resent high tide level, and the 
upper surface covered with grass and shrubs {vide illustration). Bocks of 
a similar kind are also to be found elsewhere on Bound Island, as well as on 
Bcgnain, or Plat Island, to the south. A map of the latter is appended to 
Captain Halsted’s paper, showing the present island to consist of three terraces 
differing from each other in level by six or eight feet, i. e., \st, the original island 
(containing a mud volcano in its centre) previous to the elevation, which is said 
to have taken place about the middle of the I7th century; the island after 
this occurrence; and 3rd, the present island, the outer portion of which was 
raised about the year 1760i according to native information obtained by Captain 
Halstcd. The last elevation was accompanied by a very violent earthquake : in 
Cheduba “ the sea washed to and fro several times with great fury, and then 
retired from the grounds, leaving an immense quantity of fish, the feasting on which 
is a favorite story throughout the island; no lives were lost, no rents in the earth 
occurred, nor fire from the volcanoes of the island.” It has been suggested by 
Mr. Piddington (native villagers not being very accurate, generally, as to dates) 
that the earthquake was coincident with the submarine volcanic eruption de¬ 
scribed as having occurred off Pondicherry in 1757 and, with much more pro¬ 
bability, by Lieutenant Baird Smith, to have been the same earthquake as that 
which partially destroyed Chittagong in April 1762, and which was felt through¬ 
out Bengal, Arrakan, and Pegu.^ A comparison of Captain Halstcd’s map of 
Plat Island with the present shore line indicates no further elevation since the 
date of his paper. 
His measurements show the total elevation to have been 9 feet at Poul 
Island, 50 miles south-east of Cheduba, from 12 to 22 feet in various parts 
of Cheduba itself, and 13 feet at the Torribles, west of Kyauk Phyu; the 
elevation having been greatest towards the north of Cheduba, and declining 
both to south-east and north-west. Evidences of the inequality of the elevation 
are also to be found in Bamri. On the western coast, between Konbaung and 
Kyauk Grale (and doubtless further) there is a raised beach about 20 feet above 
1 Ninety years before 1841 according to the text, which refers to Cheduba. On the map of Flat 
Island the last elevation there is stated to have occurred eighty years before the same date, but 
this would appear to be a clerical error; there is no allusion in Captain Halstcd’s papei- to a differ¬ 
ence of ten years between the last elevations of Cheduba and Flat Island respectively. 
* Trans. Bombay Geographical Society, X, 146. ^ Journ. As. Soc., Bengal, XII, 1050.* * 
