“In 1828 Sir A. Burnes went in a boat to the ruins of Sindree, where a single remaining tower was seen in the midst of a wide expanse of sea.  The tops of the ruined walls still rose two or three feet above the level of the water; and, standing on one of these, he could behold nothing in the horizon but water, except in one direction, where a blue streak of land to the north indicated the Ullah Bund.  This scene,” says Lyell ("Principles of Geology,” p. 462), “presents to the imagination a lively picture of the revolutions now in progress on the earth-a waste of waters where a few years before all was land, and the only land visible consisting of ground uplifted by a recent earthquake.”

We give from Lyell’s great work the following curious pictures of the appearance of the Fort of Sindree before and after the inundation.

Fort of SINDEE, on the eastern branch of the Indus, before it was
submerged by the earthquake of 1819.

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 5th to July of that year; but was most violent on the 11th and 12th of July.  The sound of the explosions was heard for nearly one thousand miles.  Out of a population of 12,000, in the province of Tombora, 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’s “History of Java,” vol. i., p. 28.) 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 1000 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’s “History of Java,” vol. i., p. 25.)

        Viewof the fort of Sindree from the west in march, 1839.