A GREAT SEA- WAVE. 



205 



perceived near the shore. Even there, as we shall 

 presently see, there was much to convey the impression 

 that the land itself was rising and falling rather than 

 that the deep was moved. But among the hundreds 

 of ships, which were sailing upon the Pacific when its 

 length and breadth were traversed by the great sea- 

 wave, there was not one in which any unusual motion 

 was perceived. 



In somewhat less than three hours after the occur- 

 rence of the earthquake, the ocean-wave inundated the 

 port of Coquimbo, on the Chilian seaboard, some 800 

 miles from Arica. An hour or so later it had reached 

 Constitucion, 450 miles farther south ; and here for 

 some three hours the sea rose and fell with strange 

 violence. Farther south, along the shore of Chili, 

 even to the island of Chiloe, the shore-wave travelled, 

 though with continually diminishing force, owing 

 doubtless to the resistance which the irregularities of 

 the shore opposed to its progress. 



The northerly shore-wave seems to have been more 

 considerable ; and a moment's study of a chart of the 

 two Americas will show that this circumstance is 

 highly significant. When we remember that the 

 principal effects of the land-shock were experienced 

 within that angle which the Peruvian Andes form with 

 the long north-and-south line of the Chilian and 

 Bolivian Andes, we see at once that had the centre of 

 the subterranean action been near the scene where the 

 most destructive effects were perceived, no sea-wave, or 

 but a small one, could have been sent towards the 



