On the opposite side of the Globe, 10,000 miles from Mexico, we have had, almost in our own time, an exhibition of volcanic phenomena not less wonderful than those we have been describing. The island of Sumbawa lies about two hundred miles to the east of Java in the Indian Archipelago; and it belongs to that remarkable chain of Volcanos which we have already described as stretching, with little interruption, along the coast of Asia from Russian America to the Bay of Bengal. In the year 1815, this island was the scene of a calamitous eruption, the effects of which were felt over the whole of the Molucca Islands and Java, as well as over a considerable portion of Celebes, Sumatra, and Borneo. Indeed, so extraordinary are the incidents of this eruption, that we might well hesitate to believe them if they had not been collected on the spot with more than ordinary diligence, and recorded with an almost scrupulous care. Sir Stamford Raffles, who was at the time governor of Java, then a British possession, required all the residents in the various districts under his authority to send in a statement of the circumstances which occurred within their own knowledge; and from the accounts he received in this way, combined with other evidence, chiefly obtained from eye-witnesses, he drew up the narrative to which we are mainly indebted for the following facts. The explosions which accompanied this eruption were heard in Sumatra, at a distance of 970 geographical miles; and in the opposite direction at Ternate, a distance of 720 miles. In the neighborhood of the Volcano itself, immense tracts of land were covered with burning lava, towns and villages were overwhelmed, all kinds of vegetation completely destroyed, and of 12,000 inhabitants in the province of Tomboro, only twenty-six survived. The ashes, which were ejected in great quantities, were carried like a vast cloud through the air, by the southeast monsoon, for 300 miles in the direction of Java; and, still farther to the west, we are told that they formed a floating mass in the ocean two feet thick and several miles in extent, through which ships with difficulty forced their way. It is recorded, too, that they fell so thick on the island of Tombock, 100 miles away, as to cover all the land two feet deep, destroying every particle of vegetation, insomuch that 44,000 people perished of the famine that ensued. “I have seen it computed,” writes Sir John Herschel, “that the quantity of ashes and lava vomited forth in this awful eruption would have formed three mountains the size of Mont Blanc, the highest of the Alps; and if spread over the surface of Germany, would have covered the whole of it two feet deep.” Finally, it appears that this eruption was accompanied, like that of Monte Nuovo, by a permanent change in the level of the adjoining coast; in this case, however, it was a movement, not of upheaval, but of subsidence: the town of Tomboro sunk beneath