244. Onthe Reality of the Rise of the Coast of Chale. 
Mr. Greenough mentions Mrs. Callcott’s published journal, and 
accounts for the dead fish on the shore* by an imaginary storm. 
Common candor would have led that gentleman to have stated that, 
in that very journal, it is distinctly printed, that a “delightful and 
calm moon-light night followed a quiet and moderately warm day.” 
Mr. Greenough says, further in p. 18 of his address—* some mus- 
cles and oysters still adhere, she says, to the rocks on which they 
grew: but we know not the nature of these rocks, whether fixed _ 
or drifted.” Mrs. Callcott was ignorant that there were, or might 
have been, drifted rocks, until she learned it from Mr. Green- 
ough; for much as she has been at sea, she never met with one. 
The rocks at Quintero, and at Valparaiso, are of grey gramite, and 
where they lift themselves through the sand and shingle of the beach, 
they give the notion of bald mountain tops. At all events, they are 
fixed sufficiently to have caused the wreck of more than one Spanish 
ship of war; and when she saw them the morning after the Earth- 
quake, that on which the wreck of the Aguila lay, was certainly so 
far above the water, that the vessel could be approached dry-shod, 
which had never happened before, even at the lowest tides. The 
beds of muscles, of other shell-fish, and of sea-weed, were equally 
rocks of grey granite, fixed far below the sands of the ocean. ‘These 
circumstances are stated in the published journal: but Mr. Green- 
ough has suppressed them, and many others of the hke nature, par- 
ticularly the notice of some rocks and stones, that the lowest tides 
never left dry, but have now a passage between them and the low- 
water mark, sufficient to ride round without difficulty, p. 313. 
That Mrs. Callcott’s observations were not confirmed by any na- 
val officer, may, perhaps, be accounted for in common candor, by the 
consideration, that, at the time of the Earthquake, there was not a 
ship of war, belonging either to England, the United States, or 
France, on the coast. 
Capt. King, whose testimony, had he been present, would have 
been uncontrovertible, was not on the coast till several years after- 
wards, and therefore could have had no knowledge of the state of 
the coast, or the exact soundings, as they existed before. 
As to the testimony of the natives, Mrs. Callcott feels sure that 
Mr. Greenough himself, had he been among them, would attach no 
value to their testimony, one way or another. They assured Mrs. 
Callcott, that the Virgin Mary had visibly hovered over the sea on 
* Journal of a Residence in Chile, p. 331. ¢ Journal, p. 305. 
