1 82 PLEASANT WA YS IN SCIENCE. 



their part in the work of destruction. At Mollendo the 

 railway was torn up by the sea for a distance of 300 feet. 

 A violent hurricane which set in afterwards from the south 

 prevented all vessels from approaching, and unroofed most 

 of the houses in the town. At Arica the people were busily 

 engaged in preparing temporary fortifications to repel a 

 threatened assault of the rebel ram Huiscar, at the moment 

 when the roar of the earthquake was heard. The shocks 

 here were very numerous, and caused immense damage in 

 the town, the people flying to the Morro for safety. The 

 sea was suddenly perceived to recede from the beach, and 

 a wave from ten feet to fifteen feet in height rolled in upon 

 the shore, carrying before it all that it met. Eight times was 

 this assault of the ocean repeated. The earthquake had 

 levelled to the ground a portion of the custom-house, the 

 railway station, the submarine cable office, the hotel, the 

 British Consulate, the steamship agency, and many private 

 dwellings. Owing to the early hour of the evening, and 

 the excitement attendant on the proposed attack of the 

 ffuiscar, every one was out and stirring ; but the only loss of 

 life which was reported was that of three little children who 

 were overtaken by the water. The progress of the wave 

 was only stopped at the foot of the hill on which the church 

 stands, which point is further inland than that reached in 

 August, 1868. Four miles of the embankment of the rail- 

 way were swept away like sand before the wind. Locomo- 

 tives, cars, and rails, were hurled about by the sea like 

 so many playthings, and left in a tumbled mass of rubbish. 



The account proceeds to say that the United States 

 steamer Waters, stranded by the bore of 1868, was lifted 

 up bodily by the wave at Arica, and floated two miles north 

 of her former position. The reference is no doubt to the 

 double-ender IVatertrce, not stranded by a bore (a term 

 utterly inapplicable to any kind of sea-wave at Arica, where 

 there is no large river), but carried in by the great wave 

 which followed the earthquake of August 13. The de- 

 scription of the wave at Arica on that occasion should be 





