MR. CALDCLEUGH ON THE GREAT EARTHQUAKE IN CHILE. 
25 
By this last inroad, two schooners, anchored in the port, carried away their cables, 
and were found among 1 the bushes one hundred and fifty yards from the beach. 
A third rush of the sea occurred half an hour afterwards, which ascended to a height 
of nine feet ; and for the space of forty-eight hours repeated rollers came forward, but 
with diminished violence. No elevation of the coast has been discovered at this port, 
but on the bar at the mouth of the river, which has always rendered the entrance to 
the port both difficult and dangerous, two feet more water has been remarked ; and 
in consequence of the fall of an immense point of a mountain into the sea, it is hoped 
that, owing to the new direction given to the current, no further accumulation of 
sand will take place. 
In Valparaiso the sea was observed to advance and recede rapidly, but gently and 
without violence. 
It would be of little avail to distress the Society with the details of the ruin caused 
in all the southern provinces of Chile by this convulsion. To the southward of Talca 
scarcely a wall has been left standing, and even to the north of this line the damage 
caused to every description of building has been most serious. Throughout the pro- 
vinces of Canqueues and Concepcion, the entire crust of the earth has been rent and 
shattered in every direction. In some places fissures of several feet in depth and 
width have been discovered intersecting the country for considerable distances. On 
one estate near Chilian, thirty leagues from the coast, extensive fissures have been the 
vents of muddy eruptions of salt water, which have made large deposits of a kind of 
grey pulverulent tufa ; and on the same estate a great many circular pools were dis- 
covered of salt water, and many new thermal springs have burst forth. In many 
places the ground swelled like a large bubble, and then bursting, poured forth black 
and extraordinarily fetid water. 
The limits to which the oscillations extended were, to the north as far as Coquimbo, 
and to Mendoza on the eastern ridge of the great chain of the Andes. Vessels navi- 
gating the Pacific within a hundred miles of the coast experienced the shock with 
considerable force. The bark Glenmalia, bound to Valparaiso, when ninety-five 
miles from the coast and in front of the Maule, had her course through the water sud- 
denly checked, and her rate of sailing altered from seven knots to one, and the master 
conceived the vessel was dragging over a sand-bank. The sea was strongly agitated, 
and appeared to lift the vessel twenty feet. Such was the alarm that the boats were 
nearly lowered : no soundings were met with. 
The Island of Juan Fernandez, a mass of basalt three hundred and sixty miles 
from the coast, experienced the earthquake, but with less violence ; the sea rose to 
the height of the Mole in a similar manner to that of Concepcion, and then receded, 
leaving the bottom of Cumberland Bay dry to some distance from the shore, and 
in the second rush rose fifteen feet above the usual level, carrying all before it. At 
the same time the Governor, Major Sutcliffe, observed a dense column of smoke 
issuing from the sea about a mile off the Point Bacalao, which lasted until 2 o’clock 
MDCCCXXXVI. E 
