The following is an extract from the reports of Lieutenant Owen Phillips, dated at Bima on the island of Sumbawa. "On my trip towards the western part of the island, I passed through nearly the whole of Dompo and a considerable part of Bima. The extreme misery to which the inhabitants have been reduced is shocking to behold. There were still on the road-side the remains of several corpses, and the marks of where many others had been interred: the villages almost entirely deserted and the houses fallen down, the surviving inhabitants having dispersed in search of food. The Rajah of Sang'ir came to wait on me at Dompo, on the 3d instant. The suffering of the people there appears, from his account, to be still greater than in Dompo. The famine has been so severe that even one of his own daughters died from hunger. I presented him with three coyangs of rice in your name, for which he appeared most truly thankful.
"As the Rajah was himself a spectator of the late eruption, the following account which he gave me is perhaps more to be depended upon than any other I can possibly obtain. About 7 p. m. on the 10th of April, three distinct columns of flame burst forth near the top of the Tomboro mountain (all of them apparently within the verge of the crater), and after ascending separately to a very great height, their tops united in the air in a troubled confused manner. In a short time, the whole mountain next Sang'ir appeared like a body of liquid fire, extending itself in every direction. The fire and columns of flame continued to rage with unabated fury, until the darkness caused by the quantity of falling matter obscured it at about 8 p. m. Stones, at this time, fell very thick at Sang'ir; some of them as large as two fists, but generally not larger than walnuts. Between 9 and 10 p. m. ashes began to fall, and soon after a violent whirlwind ensued, which blew down nearly every house in the village of Sang'ir, carrying the ataps, or roofs, and light parts away with it. In the part of Sang'ir adjoining Tomboro its effects were much more violent, tearing up by the roots the largest trees and carrying them into the air, together with men, horses, cattle, and whatever else came within its influence. (This will account for the immense number of floating trees seen at sea). The sea rose nearly twelve feet higher than it had ever been known to do before, and completely spoiled the only small spots of rice land in Sang'ir, sweeping away houses and every thing within its reach. The whirlwind lasted about an hour. No explosions were heard till the whirlwind had ceased, at about 11 a. m. From midnight till the evening of the 11th, they continued without intermission; after that time their violence moderated, and they were only heard at intervals, but the explosions did not cease entirely until the 15th of July. Of the whole villages of Tomboro, Tempo containing about forty inhabitants is the only one remaining. In Pekáté no vestige of a house is left: twenty-six of the people, who were at Sumbawa at the time, are the whole of the population who have escaped. From the most particular inquiries I have been able to make, there were certainly not fewer than twelve thousand individuals in Tomboro and Pekáté at the time of the eruption, of whom only five or six survive. The trees and herbage of every description, along the whole of the north and west sides of the peninsula, have been completely destroyed, with the exception of a high point of land near the spot where the village of Tomboro stood."