The Birmingham age-herald., 1907-08-04
HOW ISLANDS ARE FORMED IN THE SEA New Lands Rise Up in the
 Southern Ocean SUBMARINE VULCAN ISM Tonga Has Had Plenteous Experience In Witnessing the Formation of
 New lslands-Annexa-
 ton of Falcon.
SUBMARINE VULCAN ISM
From the New York Sun.

From the New York Sun.
 The inner turmoil Of the earth is once again adding new land to the island dotted eNpanse of the South sea, the present ac- tvity being reported rom the archipelago eommoniy known Tonga, the lands u which Cook assigned the ill hcting name of the Frcndly Islands. Tnele ale pres ent all the classic phases of submal inc Nulcanism, the columns Of fire, smoke and steam. the reyerDeration ot incessant eX- plostions in the age long war of water and fire, the clouds of asnes, the hurnns .. pumice and bolides.
 Tonga has had a plenteous experience In witnessing such additions to its terri tory. All those islands are volcanic, for even the low eastern islands are but emergent peaks of former volcanoes whose roots lie far down in the sea. It's western chain is made up of lofty islands of vol canic rock, geologically modern. yet lar older than the date of the coming of the Folynesian people to their present homes In this chain lie the active volcanoes of Lette and Tofua and the extinct cone of koa. few leagues to the north of the Tonga archipelago lie the volcanic islands of Niualoou and Niuatobulabu.
 During the twelve years from 1S4j to 1857 Tonga was under an almost unn- corrupted bombardment from its volcanoes and from new discharges from the sea bottoml In 1S47 there grew up in it's sea q new island. It lasted long enough to receive from the piety of the island con Verts the name of Wesley and then it slowly sank beneath the waves which had boiled about its upheaval. In 1883 q siml- lar submarine convulson brought to the surface another new land in the same waters. It is impossible to conceive of a more magnificent manifestation of the might of nature. The whole of the ocean seemed to fight in vain to quench the in- ternal fires. At times the fire would pre- vail and great columns of clear flame would go swirling up through all the wet of the sea as if to char the turmoil of clouds that hung above the scene of con- flict. Again the sea would sweep resist less upon the blazing column, and for a time would seem to quench the flame yet even at such intervals the waves went swrling around in a ring of long oily slcks of boiling water sending upward dense clouds of sulphureous steam.
 Out of the commotion arose Falcon island, that speclS of land which served to provide the motive of the familiar story of the British gunboat lying to in the offing waiting to annex it as soon IS the thing had cooled off Duly an neXed to the British empire and re- corded on the charts Falcon island was territory of this world for no more than six or seven years, just long enough for the floating cocoanuts to take root upon it's shore and the dis integration of the fertility of it's basic lava to provide a soil for the growth of the beach conVolvulus the two mild CT agencies which take new South Sea islands hot from natures machine shops and fit them to become the homes of adventurous wanderers. Then in a sud den convlulsion Falcon returned to the silent depths.
 Tonga rests upon a place of most un- stable equilibrium. It occupies the bluff eastern arm of the great Tonga hti which rises out of the Pacific from almost abysmal depths. The stem of the rests upon New Zealand about the Kermadecs the arms begin to part, the eastern one going along under Tonga and tipping at Futuna and Uvea, the Samoan archipelago lying disconnected just off that tip; the western arm uphaises at its mortimer end the swarm of Fijian islands, one for every day in the year, if one care to reckon their tale that way.
 The greater part of the Tongahti Y
 
 less. and this sumbarine area is clearly outlined at some little distance by the curve of 5000 fathoms. But on the eastern face of stem and eastern arm the contours of greater depths press so closely upon the next lower thous- and that they may scarcely be drawn separately. To the south east of Niua- tobutabu lies record of S2S4 fathoms. and narrowly eastward of Tonga tabu there ran out S709 fathoms of wire be- fore the cold salt bottom was plumbed, one of the great ocean deeps, and for long time the deepest known. When to these 50,000 feet under the sea we add the 5000 feet of elevation of some of the Tongan mountain summits we are confronted with a mass of extrusion representing more than ten miles from base to crown and so precipitous that it stands out of the bottom as no mere mountain, but as q monstrous wall.
 In such a mass the strains must be something enormous: the inner force of it's own gravity must be sufficient to melt the most obdurate of it's rock constituents. The slightest rupture of its crystallized she'll the slightest break in continuity which shall permit the entrance of the sea to the hot fluids must produce such progress in the South Sea.