462 
VOYAGE OF THE POTOMAC. 
[March, 
became the Sicily of Peru, to the destruction of its own agricul- 
tural interests ! 
We have devoted a long chapter to the earthquake of seventeen 
hundred and forty-six. The subject seemed to us as one of great 
interest, in which the reader cannot fail to participate with us, 
when he reflects that our- goodly frigate now lay at anchor in the 
same port where the catastrophe occurred; that here "the sure 
and firm set earth" reeled to and fro as a drunken man ; that the 
waters of the great deep .burst from their limits, overwhelming 
and destroying a whole people, whose ruined edifices still lie par- 
tially visible, amid heaps of sand, over which we have often walked ; 
and that, though tranquil now, no human being can foresee, or 
human power prevent, at any moment, the recurrence of another 
and similar tragedy; that here, among a people not devoid of 
superstition, as the anniversary of the twenty-eighth of October 
rolls round, a numerous procession moves through the streets of 
Callao, bearing and escorting the image of old Neptune, as figured 
by mythologists, with a long and flowing beard, a crown on his 
head, enriched and bespangled with the gems of the ocean, the 
three-forked sceptre in his hand, and supported on each side by a 
Triton, bearing anchors in theirs. Moving along, to the anima- 
ting strains of music, this pageantry attracts universal attention, 
and formerly excited the most thrilling interest. The house-tops 
are lined with spectators, who cannot avoid the reflection, that 
over other edifices of equal elevation, on that day eighty-odd 
years ago, had passed heavy men-of-war, borne on the swelling 
surges of the ocean ! 
The procession moves to the water's edge, and the old sea-god 
is made to smite the ocean with his trident; while the Most 
High, " who holds the ocean in the hollow of his hand," is im- 
plored never to permit the ocean again to pass beyond its present 
bounds ! 
Turn we again to our goodly ship, which had now been com- 
pletely overhauled and painted anew. The Falmouth had been 
despatched to the ports of the north, and the Dolphin was actively 
employed. The interests of the station required the presence of 
the commodore in Valparaiso ; and on the fifteenth of March, the 
I 
