TERRESTRIAL PHYSICS. 



THE EARTHQUAKE L\ PERU, AUGUST 13, 1868. 

 \_Extract from letters of John V. Campbell, superintendent of the Arica and Tacua Eailroad.'] 



Tacua, Novemher, 1868. 



The sight of Arica would fill with dismay any one who had known the 

 place before. The destrnctionhas been complete, and more need not be 

 said, were it not that the ruins and signs of the great devastation 

 that meet one on all sides make the aspect of the place so painful that 

 people who once see it are afraid to look on it again. The lower part of 

 the town is a heap of ruins, except where passages have been cleared to 

 serve as streets, while in the upper part, beyond the reach of the tidal 

 wave, many walls and parts of houses are still standing, but so cracked 

 and shattered as to be quite uninhabitable, and they evidently show 

 that, even without the aid of the sea, Arica was a mass of ruins after 

 the heavy shock of the earthquake. Further back on the pampa, going 

 toward Arapa, the people have built their wooden sheds in great num- 

 bers and with much regularity. It is said this will be the future site 

 of the town. 



In the part of the town that was washed by the sea the confusion of 

 the ruins is indescribable, and the effect of the waves is bewildering. 

 Alongside the mole is the stationary engine-boiler of the railway, also 

 the remains of the two locomotive-tenders ; up in the market-place is 

 another tender, one of the boilers of the llour-mill, and one of the iron 

 girders of Mr. Hegan's turn-table, all large pieces of iron weighing 

 many tons, that have been carried by the force of the waves more 

 than seven hundred yards. Facing Eusert's house, or rather the site 

 where it stood, is oije of the locomotives ; farther on, facing Nugent's 

 house, is another ; and a few yards farther, the third, 'all in the sea, 

 broken and completely worthless. The strength of the wave is, how- 

 ever, more apparent at San Jose, where the piers of the bridge have 

 been cut oif, on a level with the bed of the ris^er, and carried in large 

 compact blocks of masonry intact, four, five, and six hundred yards on to 

 the highest ground behind. The tubular girders have been carried a 

 similar distance, and many broken. 



The bed of San Jose Eiver has been filled up about four feet, while our 

 embankment on each side has been washed down, and the temporary track 

 we have built passes over the bed of the river with a culvert of only 

 three feet. This of course the floods will carry away in winter, and 

 how we shall ever manage to construct a permanent bridge I cannot yet 



