310 CONNEXION OF THE ELEVATORY [cHaP. xIv. 
to the extent of shoal water which has been agitated together 
with the bottom on which it rested. 
The most remarkable effect of this earthquake was the perma- 
nent elevation of the land; it would probably be far more cor- 
rect to speak of it as the cause. There can be no doubt that the 
land round the Bay of Concepcion was upraised two or three feet ; 
but it deserves notice, that owing to the wave having oblite- 
rated the old lines of tidal action on the sloping sandy shores, I 
could discover no evidence of this fact, except in the united tes- 
timony of the inhabitants, that one little rocky shoal, now ex- 
posed, was formerly covered with water. At the island of S. 
Maria (about thirty miles distant) the elevation was greater ; on 
one part, Captain Fitz Roy found beds of putrid mussel-shells 
still adhering to the rocks, ten feet above high-water mark: the 
inhabitants had formerly dived at low-water spring-tides for these 
shells. The elevation of this province is particularly interesting, 
from its having been the theatre of several other violent earth- 
quakes, and from the vast numbers of sea-shells scattered over 
the land, up to a height of certainly 600, and I believe, of 1000 
feet. At Valparaiso, as I have remarked, similar shells are 
found at the height of 1300 fect: it is hardly possible to doubt 
that this great elevation has been effected by successive small 
uprisings, such as that which accompanied or caused the earth- 
quake of this year, and likewise by an insensibly slow rise, which 
is certainly in progress on some parts of this coast. 
The island of Juan Fernandez, 360 miles to the N.E., was, at 
the time of the great shock of the 20th, violently shaken, so that 
the trees beat against each other, and a volcano burst forth under 
water close to the shore: these facts are remarkable because this 
island, during the earthquake of 1751, was then also affected more 
violently than other places at an equal distance from Concepcion, 
and this seems to show some subterranean connection between 
these two points. Chiloe, about 340 miles southward of Con- 
cepcion, appears to have been shaken more strongly than the inter- 
mediate district of Valdivia, where the voleano of Villarica was 
noways affectec, whilst in the Cordillera in front of Chiloe, two 
of the volcanos burst forth at the same instant in violent action. 
These two volcanos, and some neighbouring ones, continued for 
