Note 6 — Chapter I

Temperature in 1891 = 103.5. Hume visited the island in 1873 and noted 140°, while in 1866 the Andaman Committee found the temperature to be between 158° and 163°. In 1857 Dr Mouat landed, and writes of "a natural boiling spring, the waters so extremely hot that they rendered the sea in the immediate neighbourhood warm enough to roast crabs in their shells," and about the same date Dr von Liebig records a broad but thin sheet of nearly boiling water issuing from beneath the lava, and the sea warm for many yards to a depth of more than 8 feet. Earlier still, in 1831, we have Dr Adam's account, which states that 100 yards from shore the water was nearly boiling; the stones and rocks on shore exposed at low tide were smoking and hissing, and the water was boiling all round them.