EARTHQUAKE IN PERU. 423 



self, -when I mention that the best-boused man in Arica is Ausdell, who 



is living in the remains of a first-class railway-car. I stay with him 



when in Arica. 



J. Tacua had a marvelous escape. Only a few very old houses, these 



I principally at the corners of the streets, where they had no support from 



other walls, came down. Of course every building suffered ; but beyond 



plaster and paper falling down, and cracks at all the joints, I do not find 



much damage in any of our property. The dwelling-house stood well, 



and 1 have now increased confidence in its strength — a consolation, you 



may be sure, as we have seldom less than four to six earthquakes daily. 



* « * # * * * 



Tacua, September 15, 1869. 



Months have appeared years since I last wrote you, so horrid have 

 been the times through which I have passed, and yet I have to be grate- 

 ful that I and my family are yet alive. I allude to the dreadful visita- 

 tion of yellow fever, which now, thank God, has passed away. 



It commenced in Arica in November, and up to 31st March, 1869, the 

 official records alone show one thousand nine hundred and fifty-nine 

 burials, but the real mortality was over two thousand five hundred. Of 

 our contract-men in the station and workshop seventeen out of twenty 

 died. In July, 1868, I shipped at Liverpool a blacksmith, John Parry, 

 with his wife and three children, and I was in Arica when they reached 

 their destination. First a child died, then the mother, the father fol- 

 lowed, and I was taking measures to send home the two orphans, when 

 they died also. The family was thus wiped out completely, and there 

 were many other similar cases. 



In Tacua the fever broke out with the suddenness of an exi^losion and 

 swe])t to their last rest over three thousand three hundred souls. The 

 mortality would have been much greater, but the people fled to the hills 

 and in that way escaped contagion. Among my wife's relatives w^e lost, 

 counting grown-up people only, her aunt, and two of her sons, and two 

 cousins. I lost four clerks, and among them our book-keeper and cashier, 

 men we cannot readily replace. 



Our situation through March, April, and May was awful ; we were 

 expecting death at every moment and continually sorrowing for the 

 loss of one friend after another. At times there were no bakers and no 

 bread, no butchers and. no shops. All the apothecaries died and their 

 places had to be taken by amateurs. The carts were insufficient to 

 carry the dead, and three relays of cartmen died in succession. The 

 cemeteries were filled to repletion, and then the bodies were thrown 

 into trenches. We are now walling round these trenches, and they take 

 over seven thousand feet of wall to inclose them. 



I have recalled to my memory a time that now appears to me a 

 horrid dream, and I had better turn to a more agreeable subject. You 



