The New Hampshire Gazette

Extract of a Letter from an Officer of one of the French East-Indiamen lately arrived, to a friend at the Hague, and from thence Sent to a Merchant in LONDON.

Just before we sailed from Pondicherry, fires broke out on the surface of the sea, three leagues from that place, with the utmost impetuosity, throwing up pumice-stones, and other combustibles, and forming an island of a league long, and of the same breadth, which increased to a considerable height. with a volcano, making a most hideous noise, like thunder, or great guns, and a cloud proceeding from it, breaking into small rain of sand instead of water.

This prodigy was first seen by a ship's crew belonging to this place, who thought at first it had been a water spout ; but coming nearer it, saw a prodigious flashing of fire, which smelt of Brimstone, and heard a most astonishing noise ; afterwards a vast quantity of fish was perceived dead on the sea, and appearing broiled. Sailing a little farther, they met with such quantities of pumice-stones, that it was hardly possible to make through them ; at the same time they discerned land, but it appeared to them as a cloud of fire and smoke on the surface of the sea, and the cloud ascending into the air, distilled in showers of rain, which brought abundance of sand on their ship's deck, and being nigh the flashes of fire, and hearing the noise, they were under great consternation ; but it pleased God to send them a little breeze of wind that brought them from it. Another ship sailed round it, and they were so becalmed, that the ashes proceeding from the vast fire fell on their deck, and they were in great danger of being burnt.