QUINTERO. 311 
sides. Mercury, in a decanter, was affected in the same manner. 
We had no barometer with us, nor could I learn that any observ- 
ations had been made. 
Saturday, 23d. —The shocks diminished in frequency and force 
during the night and the early part of the day, only one having been 
felt before four p. m.; when there were four between that and this 
hour, ten o’clock. The weather has been cloudy but pleasant 
to-day. 
More reports from the neighbourhood. The fishermen all along 
the coast assert, that on the night of the 19th they saw a light far out 
at sea, which was stationary for some time; then advanced towards 
the land, and, dividing into two, disappeared. The priests have con- 
verted this into the Virgin with lights to save the country. 
A Beata saint at Santiago foretold the calamity the day before ; 
the people prayed, and the city suffered little. A propio was de- 
spatched to Valparaiso, who arrived too late, although he killed three 
horses under him, to put the people on their guard. 
Since the 19th the young women of Santiago, dressed in white, 
bare-footed, and bare-headed, with their hair unbraided, and bearing 
black crucifixes, have been going about the streets singing hymns 
and litanies, in procession, with all the religious orders at their head. 
At first, the churches were crowded, and the bells tolled the dis- 
tress incessantly, till the government, aware that many of the belfries 
and some of the churches were cracked, shut them up, lest they 
should fall on the heads of the people; so that now they per- 
form their acts of devotion in the streets, and each family devotes its 
daughters to the holy office. 
At length we have an account of the catastrophe as it affected 
Quillota from Don Fausto del Hoyo, Lord Cochrane’s prisoner. Don 
Fausto’s head-quarters, now he is a prisoner at large, have been 
generally at that place, though he is equally at home at Quintero. 
He always speaks of Lord Cochrane as Et T10 (uncle), a term of en- 
dearment used by soldiers to their chief, by children to their 
older friends. He is a shrewd man, but not clever, — unconquerably 
