376 



CONCEPCION. 



March, 1835. 



tain. The side walls, though exceedingly fractured, yet re- 

 mained standing ; but the vast buttresses (at right angles to 

 them^ and therefore parallel to the walls that fell) were in 

 many cases cut clean off, as if by a chisel^ and hurled to the 

 ground. 



Some square ornaments on the coping of these same 

 walls were moved by the earthquake into a diagonal position. 

 The buttresses of the church of La Merced, at Valparaiso^ 

 and some heavy pieces of furniture in the rooms^ were 

 similarly affected by the shock of 1822.* Mr. Lyell f 

 has also given a drawing of an obelisk in Calabria^ of which 

 the separate stones were partially turned round. In these 

 instances, the displacement at first appears to be owing to a 

 vorticose movement beneath each point thus affected ; but 

 such can hardly be the case. May it not be caused by a 

 tendency in each stone to arrange itself in some particular 

 position^ with respect to the lines of vibration, — in a 

 manner somewhat similar to pins on a sheet of paper, or 

 on a board^ when it is shaken ? Generally speakings arched 

 doorways or windows stood much better than any other kind 

 of building. Nevertheless, a poor lame old man, who had 

 been in the habit^ during trifling shocks, of crawling to a 

 certain doorway, was this time crushed to pieces. 



I have not attempted to give any detailed description of 

 the appearance of Concepcion, for I feel it is quite impossible 

 to convey the mingled feelings with which one beholds such 

 a spectacle. Several of the officers visited it before me, but 

 their strongest language failed to communicate a just idea of 

 the desolation. It is a bitter and humiliating thing to see 

 works, which have cost men so much time and labour, over- 

 thrown in one minute; yet compassion for the inhabitants is 

 almost instantly forgotten, from the interest excited in finding 

 that state of things produced in a moment of time, which one 

 is accustomed to attribute to a succession of ages. In my 



* Miers's Chile, vol. i., p. 392. 



f Lyell's Principles of Geology, chap, xv., book ii. 



