THE EARTHQUAKE IN PERU. 1 8p> 



THE EARTHQUAKE IN PERU. 



THE intelligence published last Saturday (see date of 

 article) is sufficient to prove that the great earthquake 

 which has devastated Peru fully equalled, if it did not 

 surpass, the most terrible catastrophes which have ever 

 befallen that country. It presents, too, all the features 

 which have hitherto characterised earthquakes in this 

 neighbourhood. These are well worthy of careful study , 

 and appear to have an important bearing on the modern 

 theory of earthquakes. 



It has been commonly held that the seat of disturb- 

 ance in the earthquakes which have shaken the country 

 west of the Andes has lain always at some point or 

 other beneath that range of mountains. The fact that 

 several large volcanoes are found in the Cordilleras has 

 seemed confirmatory of this view. The account we 

 have also of the great earthquake at Kiobamba in 1797, 

 seems only explicable by supposing that the seat of 

 disturbance lay almost immediately beneath that city. 

 The inhabitants were flung vertically upwards into the 

 air, and to such a height that Humboldt found the 

 skeletons of many of them on the summit of the hill La 

 Culca, on the farther side of the small river on which 

 Eiobamba is built. The ruins of many houses were also 

 flung to the same spot. Here, therefore, was evidence 

 of that vertical (or, as Humboldt expresses it, explosive) 



