Birth of an Island.

Manawatu Herald, 11 February 1899, Page 2

Birth of an Island.

A Philadelphia telegram to the New York Herald says :— An island was up* heaved on the night of September 15 in the southern part of the Indian Ocean, according to the captain and crew of the British steamer Brecon* shire, which has arrived here from Java with a cargo of sugar. The man on the outlook, according to the cap* tain, about 4 o'clock in the afternoon of September 15 saw a cloud looming up directly ahead. The cloud spread until the entire horizon ahead was obscured by a wall of vapour into which the captain did not dare to enter until the next morning, when he would have fourteen hours of daylight ahead of him. The steamer hove to, and the sailors, terrified by the unusual va« pour, waited anxiously for the next day to come. The moon came up, and by its light the sea' was seen to be as smooth as glass. Shortly after ten o'clock that night a booming sound was heard about ten miles to the northward. At the same momenta, borne upon the bosom of an immens^ wave, the Breconshire mounted verti* cally to a point at least 20ft above her former position on the ocean bed, and to the accompaniment of an immense upheaval of water an island appeared to the leeward, where all previously had been but the sea aud sky. When day dawned a clear view was afforded of the island, and its volcanic origin was clearly established. It consisted^ of vertical columns of hard minerc.^: exactitude, resembling very strongly the pictures of the famous Giant's Causeway. It was found to be only a small island, possibly not more than one-quarter of a mile in circumference, and at its highest point not at a greater altitude than 100 ft. In all probability the new island has been in ' formation for many years below the surface, and only by an upheaval of extraordinary intensity did it emergej above the surface. *^