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THE GREAT TIDAL WAVE, MAY, 1877. 113 
Cordilleras are thought to have some influence in causing the 
disturbances which are by no means uncommon in these regions ; 
and Humboidt states that the shock which devastated Riobamba 
in 1797 was so great that he found on the summit of La Culca 
the skeletons of scores of the inhabitants who had been flung 
e 
_ When these terrific earthquakes occur near the coast they are 
invariably followed by an upheaval of the water, which assumes 
ape of a tidal wave of greater or less magnitude n 
‘more instances than one the tidal waves have proved infinitely 
more disastrous than the earthquake. One case, for of 
M. Boussingault observes that in the vicinity the trembling of 
the earth is almost incessant, but this he ventures to attribute in 
part at least to the immense falling masses of rock that have been 
ountains 
fractured by disturbances in the m 
tible in Sydney. Its origin, the course which it pursued, and 
other minutie respecting it, served as subjects for scientific 
research by savans fur many months, and two German geo- 
graphers, Professor Von Hochstetter and Her Von Tschudi, 
wrote papers about the wave, and disclosed various facts that will 
prove of service to those who take an interest in this branch of 
science. Mr. Proc 
great sea-wave which was generated by the upheaval of the 
Peruvian shores in 1868, and propagated over the whole of the 
: have been accompanied 
terrestrial motions, so as to suggest the idea that they have been 
caused by the motion of the sea bottom, or of the neighbouring 
In no instance has it ever before been known that a well- 
