QUINTERO. 3jj 



sides. Mercury, in a decanter, was affected in the same manner. 

 We had no barometer with us, nor could I learn that any observ- 

 ations had been made. 



Saturday, 23d. — The shocks diminished in frequency and force 

 during the night and the early part of the day, only one having been 

 felt before four p. m. ; when there were four between that and this 

 hour, ten o'clock. The weather has been cloudy but pleasant 

 to-day. 



More reports from the neighbourhood. The fishermen all along 

 the coast assert, that on the night of the 19th they saw a light far out 

 at sea, which was stationary for some time ; then advanced towards 

 the land, and, dividing into two, disappeared. The priests have con- 

 verted this into the Virgin with lights to save the country. 



A Beata saint at Santiago foretold the calamity the day before ; 

 the people prayed, and the city suffered little. A propio was de- 

 spatched to Valparaiso, who arrived too late, although he killed three 

 horses under him, to put the people on their guard. 



Since the 19th the young women of Santiago, dressed in white, 

 bare-footed, and bare-headed, with their hair unbraided, and bearing 

 black crucifixes, have been going about the streets singing hymns 

 and litanies, in procession, with all the religious orders at their head. 

 At first, the churches were crowded, and the bells tolled the dis- 

 tress incessantly, till the government, aware that many of the belfries 

 and some of the churches were cracked, shut them up, lest they 

 should fall on the heads of the people; so that now they per- 

 form their acts of devotion in the streets, and each family devotes its 

 daughters to the holy office. 



At length we have an account of the catastrophe as it affected 

 Quillota from Don Fausto del Hoyo, Lord Cochrane's prisoner. Don 

 Fausto's head-quarters, now he is a prisoner at large, have been 

 generally at that place, though he is equally at home at Quintero. 

 He always speaks of Lord Cochrane as el tio (uncle), a term of en- 

 dearment used by soldiers to their chief, by children to their 

 older friends. He is a shrewd man, but not clever, — unconquerably 



