In April, 1815, one of the most frightful eruptions recorded in history occurred in the province of Tomboro, in the island of Sumbawa, about two hundred miles from the eastern extremity of Java. It lasted from April 5 to July of that year; but was most violent on the 11th and 12th of July. The sound of the explosion was heard nearly one thousand miles. Out of a population of 12,000 in the province of Tomboro, only twenty-six individuals escaped. "Violent whirlwinds carried up men, horses, and cattle into the air, tore up the largest trees by the roots, and covered the whole sea with floating timber." (Raffles' _History_ of Java, vol. I, 38.) The ashes darkened the air; "the floating cinders to the westward of Sumatra formed, on the 12th of April, a mass two feet thick and several miles in extent, through which ships with difficulty forced their way." The darkness in daytime was more profound than the blackest night. "The town called Tomboro, on the west side of Sumbawa, was overflowed by the sea, which encroached upon the shore, so that the water remained permanently eighteen feet deep in places where there was land before. The area covered by the convulsion was 1,000 English miles in circumference. "In the island of Amboyna, in the same month and year, the ground opened, threw out water, and then closed again." (Raffles' _History of Java_, vol. I, p. 52.) But it is at the point of the European coast nearest to the site of Atlantis at Lisbon that the most tremendous earhquake of modern times has occurred. On the 1st of November, 1775, a sound was heard underground, and immediately afterward a violent shock threw down the greater part of the city. In six minutes 60,000 persons perished. A great concourse of people had collected for safety upon a new quay, built entirely of marble; but suddenly it sank down with all the people on it, and not one of the dead bodies ever floated to the surface. * * * The water where the quay went down is now 600 feet deep. The area covered by this earthquake was very great. Humboldt says that a portion of the earth's surface, four times as great as the size of Europe, was simultaneously shaken. It extended from the Baltic to the West Indies, and from Canada to Algiers. At eighty leagues from Morocco the ground opened and swallowed a village of 10,000 inhabitants, and closed again over them. [23]