1835. SITUATION — HOUSES — SUGGESTIONS. 477 



anyone, by purchasing the ground, and distributing it so fairly 

 that each man should gain rather than lose. The sum necessary 

 for purchasing ground for a new city, would not have been 

 greater than might have been borrowed ; and repaid in ten 

 years out of the custom-house. 



Perhaps there is not a situation in the world much more 

 advantageous to the prosperity of a commercial city than this 

 of which we are speaking. Centrally placed between the great 

 and navigable river Bio Bio, the port of San Vicente, the noble 

 bay of Concepcion, and an easy communication by land with 

 the best part of Chile, 'a part which may well be called one of 

 the finest countries in the world : — with a large extent of level 

 and fertile land on all sides — with the means of obtaining 

 water by sinking wells to a small depth, as well as by an 

 aqueduct from the Bio Bio — and with the blessing of an un- 

 exceptionable climate — how could the New Concepcion fail 

 to thrive, and increase rapidly ? It might be shaken down and 

 destroyed by an earthquake as soon as built, maybe said. Proba- 

 bly, may be replied, if the inhabitants should be so unwise as to 

 build houses of brick and stone, one or two stories in height, 

 and with heavily tiled roofs. But let them try another mode 

 of building. Wood is abundant, and let them make that the only 

 material of which either walls or roofs shall be composed. A 

 strong frame-work, similar in some measure to that of a ship, 

 lightly covered or ceiled with thin planks, and roofed with 

 shingles,* would, if placed on the ground and not let into it 

 as foundations usually are, withstand the convulsions of any 

 earthquake which has yet happened in that tormented country. 

 Why do not the Chilians pay more attention to the remark of 

 the aborigines of Peru, who, when they saw the Spaniards 

 digging deep foundations for their buildings, said, " You are 

 building your own sepulchres .''"f 



The houses of the natives of Peru were in those days built 

 without foundations, simply upon the levelled ground ; and 

 they withstood the severest shocks. No house should extend far 



* Small pieces of wood, like tiles. t Ulloa, vol. i. p. 340. 



