Account of the Earthquake in Chili. 4] 
_ change, and was prepared to observe any that might have occur- 
red, saw none whatever. | 
“ During the earthquake the ground rose and fell with great vio- 
lence, and with almost inconceiveable rapidity. There was cer- 
tainly no undulatory motion, though many unobserving and unre- 
flecting persons suppose this to have been the case. I had astrong 
suspicion at the time, since confirmed by observation of its effects, 
that there was a powerful horizontal motion, but as I could not 
perceive it as coming from any particular point, I concluded at the 
time that I was mistaken. The circumstances which make me now 
conclude there was a horizontal motion, are observations I have 
since made in many places, in which walls, and even houses, have 
been partially twisted round, and from the fissures round the roots 
of the largest trees. At Quintero, ten miles to the northward of 
Concon, are several large palm-trees ; three of these standing so as 
to form an equilateral triangle, lashed one another like willow rods, 
and beat or shook off many of their branches. The motion of these 
trees seems to have been horizontal and circular, since each of them 
cleared a space in the ground round its stem, several inches wide, 
and this was the case also with other large trees in different places, 
“ The sensation we experienced during the earthquake, was pro- 
bably the same we should have felt had we been conscious that a 
mine had been sprung beneath us, and was about to blow us all 
into the air. . 
“On examination next morning, at daylight, I found the earth 
full of fissures, some of them very small, while others were from 
two to three feet wide. In many places sand had been forced up, 
and had formed small hillocks. In the most recently formed allu- 
vial soil near the river, water and sand had been forced up together, 
there being many large truncated cones of clean washed sand, each 
of which had a hollow in the centre, like the crater of a volcano. 
The same phenomenon was observed in several places; in other 
places, large quantities of soft mud had been forced up, and spread 
itself over the surface of the land. 
“ The surface of the country has been raised all along the coast, 
as far as my information extends. It seems to have been raised 
