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On the Earthquake in Chile, 1851. 395 
were preceded and accompanied by a rumbling noise, others were 
wholly in silence, and there was more than one instance of noise 
without the least perceptible disturbance. 
On the following day [ started for the purpose of examining 
the line of destruction ina southerly direction, and soon found 
that the effects diminished as the plain widened. Even at the 
Maypn, sixteen miles south of the city, had not attention been 
previously occupied, one would not specially have noticed crevices 
in the walls. Though the toll-receiver assured me he had seen 
large masses of earth thrown down from the vertical banks, on 
the south side of the stream, its bridge, with high abutments 
and supporting piers, was wholly uninjured. No crevices could 
be found in the banks near the bridge. 
na line west of the latter, where the Maypn passes through 
the Central Cordilleras, the latter make a sudden bend eastward ; 
and the Andes—at a nearly opposite point—curving to the west- 
ward, the two chains closely approach each other at a pass twenty 
miles south of the stream, called the Estero de Payne. Indeed, 
the two chains of mountains, here about two thousand feet above 
the plain, are separated by a gorge of the same level as the plain, 
Whose average width is not more than one hundred yards. Thus 
from the Cuesta de Chacabuco to the Angostura, except where 
the Maypu passes through the central range, there is a continuous 
thongh irregular elliptic plain, whose diameters will not vary 
Steatly from fifty-five and twenty-five miles. The widest part 
of the basin or plain is where the Maypu crosses it in latitude 
33° 42’, and here the high road to the south seemed to be near 
the eastern line of injurious disturbance. Subsequently, we 
long tremor had been felt at 74 10™, in that city, on the morning 
of the 2nd. 
way, Were perhaps broken rather more frequently than short par- 
Htions, thongh not so much so as masoury. In one case the 
back Wall of an old store-house was lifted bodily to the north 
and set down two inches froin its former foundation ; whilst a 
Short piece at right angles to it, forming a sort of abutment to i's 
fastern end, was shaken down piecemeal. The wall stood nearly 
fast and west, was of adobes eighteen inches thick, some eighty 
feet long and nine feet high. Nothing but the roof, itself partially 
