volume of ejected matter
which accumulated in the bed of the ocean, although no trace of a
volcano could be seen above the surface of the sea. Similar submarine
volcanic action has been observed in the Atlantic Ocean, and crews of
ships have reported that they have seen in different places sulphurous
smoke, flame, jets of water, and steam, rising up from the sea, or they
have observed the waters greatly discolored and in a state of violent
agitation, as if boiling in large circles.

New shoals have also been encountered, or a reef of rocks just emerging
above the surface, where previously there was always supposed to have
been deep water. On some few occasions, the gradual building up of an
island by submarine volcanoes has been observed, as that of Sabrina in
1181, off St. Michael's, in the Azores. The throwing up of ashes in this
case, and the formation of a conical hill 300 feet high, with a crater
out of which spouted lava and steam, took place very rapidly. But the
waves had the best of it, and finally washed Sabrina into the depths of
the ocean. Previous eruptions in the same part of the sea were recorded
as having happened in 1691 and 1720.

In 1831, a submarine volcanic eruption occurred in the Mediterranean
Sea, between Sicily and that part of the African coast where Carthage
formerly stood. A few years before, Captain Smyth had sounded the
spot in a survey of the sea ordered by Government, and he found the
sea-bottom to be under 500 feet of water. On June 28, about a fortnight
before the eruption was visible, Sir Pulteney Malcom, in passing over
the spot in his ship, felt the shock of an earthquake as if he had
struck on a sandbank, and the same shocks were felt on the west coast of
Sicily, in a direction from south-west to north-east.

BUILDING UP OF AN ISLAND BY SUBMARINE VOLCANOES

About July 10, the captain of a Sicilian vessel reported that as he
passed near the place he saw a column of water like a waterspout, sixty
feet high, and 800 yards in circumference, rising from the sea, and soon
after a dense rush of steam in its place, which ascended to the height
of 1,800 feet. The same captain, on his return eighteen days after,
found a small island twelve feet high, with a crater in its centre,
throwing forth volcanic matter and immense columns of vapor, the sea
around being covered with floating cinders and dead fish. The eruption
continued with great violence to the end of the same month. By the en