The official accounts state that 114 villages were destroyed, and above 4000 persons killed.[591]
Submarine volcanoes.—Although we have every reason to believe that volcanic eruptions as well as earthquakes are common in the bed of the sea, it was not to be expected that many opportunities would occur to scientific observers of witnessing the phenomena. The crews of vessels have sometimes reported that they have seen in different places sulphur ous 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. 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 formation of an island by a submarine eruption has been observed, as that of Sabrina, in the year 1811, off St. Michael's in the Azores. The throwing up of ashes in that case, and the formation of a cone about three hundred feet in height, with a crater in the centre, closely resembled the phenomena usually accompanying a volcanic eruption on land. Sabrina was soon washed away by the waves. Previous eruptions in the same part of the sea were recorded to have happened in 1691 and 1720. The rise of Nyöe, also, a small island off the coast of Iceland, in 1783, has already been alluded to; and another volcanic isle was produced by an eruption near Reikiavig, on the same coast, in June, 1830.[592]
Graham Island[593], 1831.—We have still more recent and minute information respecting the appearance, in 1831, of a new volcanic island in the Mediterranean, between the S. W. coast of Sicily and that projecting part of the African coast where ancient Carthage stood. The site of the island was not any part of the great shoal, or bank, called "Nerita," as was first asserted, but a spot where Captain W. H. Smyth had found, in his survey a few years before, a depth of more than one hundred fathoms water.[594]
Form of the cliffs of Graham Island, as seen from S. S. E., distant one mile, 7th August, 1831.[596]
View of the interior of Graham Island, 29th Sept., 1831.