Among the writers of antiquity who have transmitted accounts of islands which have thus started up to the view of the astonished spectator, Seneca asserts that, in his time, the island of Therasea, in the Egean sea, was seen to rise in this manner by several mariners, who were sailing near the point of its ascent. Pliny’s relation is still more extraordinary; for he says that in the Mediterranean, thirteen islands emerged at once from the sea, the cause of which he ascribes rather to the retiring of the waters, than to any subterraneous operation of nature: but he speaks at the same time of the island of Hiera, in the vicinity of Therasea, as having been formed by subterraneous explosions, and enumerates several others said to have been derived from a similar origin, in one of which he says, a great abundance of fishes were found, of which, however, all who ate, perished soon afterward. It is to the Grecian archipelago, and the Azores, or Western isles, that we are to look for the grandest and most surprising instances of this phenomenon. We will select an example from each of these groups of islands, beginning with the latter. In December, 1720, a violent earthquake was felt on the island of Tercera, one of the Azores. And on the following morning, a new island, which had sprung up in the night, made its appearance, and a huge column of smoke was seen rising from it. The pilot of a ship which attempted to approach it, sounded on one of these newly formed islands, with a line of sixty fathoms, but could not find a bottom. On the opposite side, the sea was deeply tinged with various colors, white, blue and green; and was very shallow. This island was larger on its first appearance than at some distance of time afterward; it at length sunk beneath the level of the sea, and is now no longer visible. What can be more surprising than to see fire, not only force its way out of the bowels of the earth, but likewise make for itself a passage through the waters of the sea! What can be more extraordinary, or foreign to our common notions of things, than to observe the bottom of the sea rise up in a mountain above its surface, and become so firm an island as to be able to resist the violence of the greatest storms! We know that subterraneous fires, when pent up in a narrow passage, are able to elevate a mass of earth as large as an island; but that this should be done in so regular and precise a manner, that the water of the sea should not be able to penetrate and extinguish those fires; and that, after they should have exhausted themselves, the mass of earth should not fall down, or sink again with its own weight, but still remain in a manner suspended over the great arch below; this seems more surprising than any of the facts which have been related of Mount Etna, Vesuvius, or any other volcano.