57 



catastrophe took place, by which, as we are told, all the landmarks 

 were removed, and the soundings at sea completely changed ? 



Mrs. Graham states that by the dislodgement of snow from the 

 mountains, and the consequent swelling of rivers and lakes, much de- 

 tritus was brought to the coast ; and further, that sand and mud were 

 brought up through cracks to the surface. Amid so many agents it 

 should not be easy to assign to each, its share in the general result. 



That fishes lay dead on the shore may prove only that there had 

 been a storm. In her published travels, Mrs. Graham represents 

 them as lying on the beach, which may very well have been thrown 

 up, as the Chesil bank has been, by a violent sea. Some muscles, 

 oysters, &c., still adhered, she says, to the rocks on which they grew ; 

 but we know not the nature or dimensions of these rocks, whether 

 fixed or drifted. The occurrence of a shelly beach above the actual 

 sea-level is an observation which must not be lost sight of. I pro- 

 pose to speak of it hereafter: in the mean time be it recollected, that 

 these beaches are said to occur along the shore at various heights, 

 along the summit of the highest hills, and even among the Andes. 



Neither in the paper of Mrs. Graham, nor in the anonymous ac- 

 count published about the same time in the Journal of Science, can 

 I find any paragraph to justify the position (which, from the se- 

 ductive character of the work* in which it appears, may, if not now 

 assailed, soon be deemed unassailable,) that a district in Chili, one 

 hundred thousand miles in area, " was uplifted to the average height 

 " of a foot or more ; and the cubic contents of the Grntiitic Mass 

 " added in a few hours to the land." By what means we get the 

 average I do not know. Mrs. Graham says the alteration of level at 

 Valparaiso, was about three feet; at Quintero, about four feet: but 

 the granitic Mass! has the geological structure of Chili been suffi- 

 ciently examined to assure us that Granite extends over one hun- 

 dred thousand square miles ? 



In the well-known work of Molina, a Jesuit who passed the 

 greater part of his life in Chili, and wrote a natural history of that 

 country-, I find no ground for supposing that in any earthquakes 

 which took place there from the time the Spaniards first landed on 

 its shores to the date of his publication, any similar phenomena had 

 been noticed. Moreover, the statement of Mrs. Graham, and of the 

 writer before alluded to, respecting the Elevation of land which oc- 

 curred during the earthquake of 1822, has not been confirmed by 

 Captain King, nor by any naval officer or naturalist who has since 

 visited that region, though many have visited it who had heard the 

 circumstance, and who would willingly have corroborated it if they 

 could. But they saw no traces of such an event j and the natives 

 with whom they conversed, neither recollected nor could be induced 

 to believe it. 



The 16th number of the " Mercurio Chileno" a scientific Journal, 

 contains an account of this earthquake, by Don Camilo Enriquez^, 

 which I have not been able to procure. A later number refers to this 

 account, and to another published in the Abeija Argentina, a work 



* Lyell, vol. i. p. 473. 

 F 2 



