CONCON. 



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vengeance. Meantime the deputy-governor, Mr. Fawkner, an Eng- 

 lishman hy birth, assembled the principal persons to take measures 



for relieving the sufferers; among the rest, came Don Dueiias, 



a man of good family, married to one of the Carreras of Vina a la 

 Mar, and proprietor of the hacienda of San Pedro. He had been 

 in his house with his wife and child : he could not save both at once? 

 he preferred his wife; and while he was bearing her out, the roof fell, 

 and his infant was crushed. His loss of property had been immense. 

 This man then, with this load of domestic affliction, came to Fawkner, 

 and told him he had ordered already four bullocks to be killed and 

 distributed to the poor ; and desired him, as governor, to remember, 

 that though his losses had been severe, he was comparatively a rich 

 man, and therefore able as he was willing to deal of his property 

 to his neighbours and fellow-sufferers. 



Sunday, 24th. — Our register of shocks to-day gives one at eight 

 o'clock a. m. ; and again at one, at three, at five, and at eleven, p. m. 

 I was on horseback, and did not feel the first. 



I had wished to go to the port on the 20th, but the river had 

 swelled so much that the ford was unsafe until to-day, when I left 

 Quintero at six o'clock. The loose banks and the edges of the water- 

 courses are pretty generally cracked or broken down ; there are 

 cracks along the beach between the Herradura and Concon, but they 

 have been nearly filled up by the loose sand falling in ; some rocks 

 and stones that the lowest tides never left dry, have now a passage 

 between them and the low water-mark sufficient to ride round 

 easily. As I approached the river, the cracks and rents in the allu- 

 vial soil almost assumed the appearance of chasms, and the earth 

 appears to have sunk on the sides of the river, where, as in Valle 

 Allegri, water and sand have been forced up through the rents. The 

 water at the ford was uncomfortably high, but we passed safely ; 

 though a mule I had brought for baggage lost her footing, and was 

 carried a little way down the stream before she could recover enough 

 to swim to the opposite shore. My friends at Concon have suffered 



s s 



