810 CONNEXION OF THE ELEVATOEY. [CHAP. xiv. 



to the extent of shoal water which has been agitated together 

 with the bottom on which it rested. 



The most remarkable effect of this earthquake was the perma- 

 nent elevation of the land ; it would probably be far more cor- 

 rect to speak of it as the cause. There can be no doubt that the 

 land round the Bay of Concepcion was upraised two or three feet ; 

 bu* it deserves notice, that owing to the wave having oblite- 

 rated the old lines of tidal action on the sloping sandy shores, I 

 could discover no evidence of this fact, except in the united tes- 

 timony of the inhabitants, that one little rocky shoal, now ex- 

 posed, was formerly covered with water. At the island of S. 

 Maria (about thirty miles distant) the elevation was greater ; on 

 one part, Captain Fitz Roy found beds of putrid mussel-shells 

 still adhering to the rocks, ten feet above high-water mark : the 

 inhabitants had formerly dived at low-water spring-tides for these 

 shells. The elevation of this province is particularly interesting, 

 from its having been the theatre of several other violent earth- 

 quakes, and from the vast numbers of sea-shells scattered over 

 the land, up to a height of certainly 600, and I believe, of 1000 

 feet. At Valparaiso, as I have remarked, similar shells are 

 found at the height of 1300 feet: it is hardly possible to doubt 

 that this great elevation has been effected by successive small 

 uprisings, such as that which accompanied or caused the earth- 

 quake of this year, and likewise by an insensibly slow rise, which 

 is certainly in progress on some parts of this coast. 



The island of Juan Fernandez, 360 miles to the N.E., was, at 

 the time of the great shock of the 20th, violently shaken, so that 

 the trees beat against each other, and a volcano burst forth under 

 water close to the shore : these facts are remarkable because this 

 island, during the earthquake of 1751, was then also affected more 

 violently than other places at an equal distance from Concepcion, 

 and this seems to show some subterranean connection between 

 these two points. Chiloe, about 340 miles southward of Con- 

 cepcion, appears to have been shaken more strongly than the inter- 

 mediate district of Valdivia, where the volcano of Villarica was 

 noways affected, whilst in the Cordillera in front of Chiloe, two 

 of th3 volcanos burst forth at the same instant in violent action. 

 These two volcanos, and some neighbouring ones, continued foi 



