EARTHQUAKES. 185 



CHILE. 



yet interesting spectacle I ever beheld. To the person who 

 had formerly known them it might possibly have been still 

 more impressive; for the ruins were so mingled together, 

 and the whole scene possessed so little the air of a habita- 

 ble place, that it was scarcely possible to imagine its former 

 condition. The earthquake commenced at half -past eleven % 

 o'clock in the forenoon. If it had happened in the middle 

 of the night the greater number of the inhabitants (which 

 in this one province amounts to many thousands) must have 

 perished, instead of less than a hundred : as it was, the in- 

 variable practice of running out of doors at the first trem- 

 bling of the ground, alone saved them. In Concepcion each 

 house, or row of houses, stood by itself, a heap or line of 

 ruins; but in Talcahuano, owing to the great wave, little 

 more than one layer of bricks, tiles, and timber, with here 

 and there part of a wall left standing, could be distinguished. 

 From this circumstance Concepcion, although not so com- 

 pletely desolated, was a more terrible, and, if I may so call 

 it, picturesque sight. The first shock was very sudden. The 

 mayor- domo at Quinquina told me that the first notice he 

 received of it was finding both the horse he rode and himself 

 rolling together on the ground. Rising up, he was again 

 thrown down. He also told me that some cows which were 

 standing on the steep side of the island were rolled into the 

 sea. The great wave caused the destruction of many cattle ; 

 on one low island, near the head of the bay, seventy animals 

 were washed off and drowned. Innumerable small trem- 

 blings followed the great earthquake, and within the first 

 twelve days no less than three hundred were counted. 



