124 REPORT—1840. 
by a series of slight shocks, which continued during many days. Rain 
(here a phenomenon) fell almost every day during six weeks; and at 
Arica, on the first week of October, there came down a deluge, such as 
had not been witnessed for half a century. The river which supplies 
Tacna with water, remained undisturbed ; but others were changed in 
their courses, and one altogether disappeared. The earthquake was 
felt many hundred miles to the south, as far as the Desert of Atacama. 
At Luto, about forty miles distant, fissures were made in the ground, 
whence issued a dark-coloured fluid. In the province of Tarapaca, 
villages were overthrown, and one, which stood in a ravine, was buried, 
with all its inhabitants. To the north, its ravages were equally exten- 
sive. The villages of Samo, distant thirty miles, and of Loquumbo, 
distant sixty, were both destroyed. Moquegua, 120 miles off, suffered 
severe damage ; and Arequipa was violently shaken, but with little in- 
jury. The’ effects extended even to the lofty peaks of Upper Peru. 
Tacora, 15,000 feet above the sea, had its church thrown down. When 
the atmosphere cleared after the calamity, that mighty range, as seen 
from Tacna, presented in many parts a new outline. Large masses 
had been detached or slid down into the valleys or ravines, leaving 
many elevated peaks denuded of their most prominent features. Mr. 
Scott, engineer, then employed at Ochozumo, about 14,500 feet high, 
describes the shocks there as terrific, and the noise, as if an immense 
mass of porcelain had, after being raised in the air, been then let fall 
and dashed to pieces. By his telescope, he saw the masses falling from 
the mountains, one of them leaving a space as large as St. Enoch’s 
Square, Glasgow. On the 20th of January, 1834, a terrible earthquake 
occurred in New Granada, by which the large towns of Popayan and 
Pastc, were entirely demolished, and many thousands perished. On 
the 21st of September, 1834, Mr. Hamilton experienced a most severe 
shock, in which the movements of the earth were entirely vertical, and 
seemed to take place twice every second. He mentions also, the ter- 
rible earthquake on the coast of Chile, the 5th of February, 1835, by 
which the sea-port of Concepcion, and Talcahuano, the capital of the 
province, were totally destroyed. The sea then retired several times 
to a great distance, and returned in immense billows. It is believed, 
that new banks were then thrown up from its bottom, and that it was 
on one of these that the Challenger, ship of war, a few months after, 
was wrecked. 
Mr. Murchison exhibited several new geological maps of different 
parts of Germany, and specially directed attention to two inedited 
maps, which had been prepared for the author’s use, and which he pro- 
posed to avail himself of in subsequent researches. The first of these 
was a map of parts of Silesia, Moravia, and Bohemia, by Leopold Von 
Buch; and the second a very large unpublished map of Germany, by 
M. H. Von Dechen, which he stated to contain a greater mass of im- 
portant detail as regards geological and mineral distinctions than any 
map of the present period. 
a 
