XIV 
PERMANENT ELEVATION OF THE LAND 
33i 
been overwhelmed, though so often shaken by the severest 
shocks. From the great wave not immediately following the 
earthquake, but sometimes after the interval of even half an 
hour, and from distant islands being affected similarly with the 
coasts near the focus of the disturbance, it appears that the 
wave first rises in the offing ; and as this is of general occur¬ 
rence, the cause must be general : I suspect we must look to 
the line where the less disturbed waters of the deep ocean join 
the water nearer the coast, which has partaken of the move¬ 
ments of the land, as the place where the great wave is first 
generated; it would also appear that the wave is larger or 
smaller, according to the extent of shoal water which has been 
agitated together with the bottom on which it rested. 
The most remarkable effect of this earthquake was the 
permanent elevation of the land ; it would probably be far 
more correct to speak of it as the cause. There can be no doubt 
that the land round the Bay of Concepcion was upraised two 
or three feet; but it deserves notice, that owing to the wave 
having obliterated the old lines of tidal action on the sloping 
sandy shores, I could discover no evidence of this fact, except 
in the united testimony of the inhabitants, that one little rocky 
shoal, now exposed, was formerly covered with water. At the 
island of S. Maria (about thirty miles distant) the elevation 
was greater ; on one part, Captain Fitz Roy found beds of 
putrid mussel-shells still adhering to the rocks , ten feet above 
high-water mark : the inhabitants had formerly dived at low- 
water spring-tides for these shells. The elevation of this 
province is particularly interesting, from its having been the 
theatre of several other violent earthquakes, and from the vast 
numbers of sea-shells scattered over the land, up to a height 
of certainly 600, and I believe, of 1000 feet. At Valparaiso, 
as I have remarked, similar shells are found at the height of 
1300 feet: it is hardly possible to doubt that this great 
elevation has been effected by successive small uprisings, such 
as that which accompanied or caused the earthquake of this 
year, and likewise by an insensibly slow rise, which is certainly 
in progress on some parts of this coast. 
The island of Juan Fernandez, 360 miles to the N.E., was, 
at the time of the great shock of the 20th, violently shaken, so 
