40 DESCRIPTIVE GEOGRAPHY. 



changed ; but since that period there have been three violent earthquakes, at each of which the 

 city of Concepcion, at a distance of 30 miles, has been almost totally destroyed. If analogous 

 and only equal effects were produced during those of 1730 and 1 751 to those of 1835, the present 

 dimensions and form of the island are at once accounted for. That single subterranean pheno- 

 menon raised the entire surrounding bed of the ocean an average of nine feet ; so that where 

 there was a depth of 30 feet of water in 1834, the officers of the Beagle could find only 21 feet 

 in the following year. Two months after the earthquake, Capt. Fitzroy took many measures 

 in places on the island, where no mistake could possibly be made respecting the amount of its 

 elevation. On large steep-sided rocks, where vertical measures could be correctly taken, beds 

 of dead muscles were found ten feet above the recent high- water mark. A few inches only 

 above what was then the spring tide high-water mark were putrid shell-fish and sea-weed, which 

 evidently had not been wetted since the upheaval of the land. One foot lower than the 

 highest bed of muscles, chitons and limpets were adhering to the rock where they had grown ; 

 and two feet lower than the same, muscles, chitons and limpets were abundant. Before the 

 earthquake an extensive rocky flat around the northern portion of the island was covered by 

 the sea, only a few projecting rocks showing themselves above water. After it, the whole 

 surface was exposed for many square acres, and the stench arising from the dead shell-fish, 

 with which it was covered, was abominable. The result of his measurements proved that 

 the southern extreme of the island had been raised eight feet, the central portion nine, and the 

 northern portion upwards of ten feet. 



Close as it is to Arauco, whose people, jealous of their liberties, have it ever in sight, it has 

 been the scene of more than one struggle with Europeans. Within our own century, Bena- 

 vides, a notorious renegade chief, seized more than one American vessel which had gone there 

 to take seals and replenish their stocks of provisions. A brief outline of these piratical 

 acts and other audacious events in the career of this freebooter is given in Capt. Basil 

 Hall's "Extracts from a Journal written on the coasts of Chile, Peru, and Mexico," Chapter 

 XXIII. The island is inhabited, and its people are able to furnish abundant supplies of vege- 

 tables. Wood and good water may also be had, though very little else. 



Quiriquina, three miles long and one mile broad, lies in the mouth of Concepcion bay ; 

 its direction being N.N.E. and S.S.W. The outline is undulating, and elevation much less 

 than that of the continent on either side of it. A recent geological examination by M. Crosnier 

 developed a stratum of coal or lignite, of bad quality, where it crops out near the N.W. 

 extremity; and, from its analogical structure to portions of the 'neighboring land, he was led 

 to believe that extensive beds exist below the surface strata. The entire soil is composed of a 

 reddish detritus, exhibiting in many places strata of fossil-shells, similar to those mixed with 

 the sands of its beach ; proving that it must have undergone at least two submersions before it 

 was definitively elevated above the surface of the bay. From what we have seen of earthquake 

 agency and effects on the neighboring island of Santa Maria, such a result cannot be regarded 

 as very extraordinary. There is a very good anchorage for vessels near its S.E. extremity. 



Perhaps no portion of our globe, of like dimensions, has ever been invested with interest for 

 so great a number as has the island of Juan Fernandez. Even in after life, when " sober second 

 thought" would teach us that Crusoe and his humble servitor had not even the exile of Selkirk 

 as their basis, memory refuses to part with its juvenile heroes, and we live on repeating Defoe's 

 narrative to our children, sincere in our early sympathies in behalf of those whom his life-like 

 portraits had seduced to belief in their reality. Yet, why this island should have been fixed 

 upon by the world as the scene of poor Robinson's trials and resignation is not comprehensible, 

 unless by association with the narrative of Selkirk, in Capt. Woodes Rogers' s "Cruising Voyage 

 round the World, I'TOS-ll, with an Account of Alexander Selkirk' s living four years on an island: 

 8vo., 1*712;" which had been printed, as the title shows, but a short time previously. The 

 island of Defoe's narrative would undoubtedly be in the north Atlantic, and not in the south 

 Pacific ocean. 



