1835.] PERMANENT ELEVATION OF THE LAND. 297 



must be general : I suspect we must look to the line, where the 

 less disturbed waters of the deep ocean join the water nearer 

 the coast, which has partaken of the movements of the land, as the 

 place where the great wave is first generated ; it would also appear 

 that the wave is larger or smaller, according 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 correct 

 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 ; but 

 it deserves notice, that owing to the wave having obliterated the 

 old lines of tidal action on the sloping sandy shores, I could dis- 

 cover no evidence of this fact, except in the united testimony of the 

 inhabitants, that one little rocky shoal, now exposed, 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 earthquakes, 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 

 aave 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 accorn- 



inied or caused the earthquake of this year, and likewise by 

 insensibly slow rise, which is certainly in progress on some 



xrts 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 



rees beat against each other, and a volcano burst forth under water 

 3lose to the shore : these facts are remarkable because this island, 

 luring the earthquake of 1751, was then also affected more 

 violently than other places at an equal distance from Concepcion, 

 ind this seems to show some subterranean connection between 

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

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



