chap. ix. within the Historical Period. 245 



shells, which together covered a space of about eighty 

 feet vertical. 



I can add nothing to the accounts already published 

 of the elevation of the land at Valparaiso, 1 which ac- 

 companied the earthquake of 1822 : but I heard it 

 confidently asserted, that a sentinel on duty, immedi- 

 ately after the shock, saw a part of a fort, which pre- 

 viously was not within the line of his vision, and this 

 would indicate that the uplifting was not horizontal : 

 it would even appear from some facts collected by Mr. 

 Alison, that only the eastern half of the bay was then 

 elevated. Through the kindness of this same gentle- 

 man, I am able to give an interesting account of the 

 changes of level, which have supervened here within 

 historical periods: about the year 1680 a long sea-wall 

 (or Prefil) was built, of which only a few fragments 

 now remain ; up to the year 1817, the sea often broke 

 over it, and washed the houses on the opposite side of 

 the road (where the prison now stands) ; and even in 

 1819, Mr. J. Martin remembers walking at the foot of 

 this wall, and being often obliged to climb over it to 

 escape the waves. There now stands (1834) on the 

 seaward side of this wall, and between it and the beach, 

 in one part a single row of houses, and in another part 

 two rows with a street between them. This great 

 extension of the beach in so short a time cannot be 

 attributed simply to the accumulation of detritus ; for 

 a resident engineer measured for me the height between 

 the lowest part of the wall visible, and the present 

 beach-line at spring-tides, and the difference was eleven 

 feet six inches. The church of S. Augustin is believed 

 to have been built in 1614, and there is a tradition that 



1 Dr. Meyen (' Reise urn Erde,' Th. I. S. 221) found in 1831 sea- 

 weed and other bodies still adhering to some rocks which during the 

 ghock of 1822 were lifted above the sea. 



