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Show 440 ST. DOMINGO, 1751.--'CONCEPTION, 1750. 36° ~4', between nine and ten in the morning, had his ship shaken and strained as if she had struck upon a rock, so that tl~e seams of the deck opened, and the compass was overtur~ed m the binnacle. Another ship forty leagues west of St. Vmcent experienced so violent a concussion, t~at the men were thrown a foot and a half perpendicularly up from the deck. In Antigua and Barbadoes, as also in Norway, Sweden, Germ~ny, I-Iolland, Corsica, Switzerland, and Italy, tremors and sbght oscillations of the ground were felt. . . . . The agitation of lakes, rivers, and sprmgs, m Great Br1tam was remarkable. At Loch Lomond in Scotland, for example, the water, without the least apparent cause, rose against its banks and then subsided below its usual level. The greatest perpe~diculat· height of this swell '":as two feet four inches. It is said that the movement of tlus earthquake was undulatory, and that it travelled at the rate o~ twenty miles a minute, its velocity being calculated by th~ mtervals ?etw.ccn the time when the first shock was felt at Lisbon, and Its time of occurrence at other distant places*. St. Domingo, 1751.-0n the 15th of September, 1751, .a shock beO'an to be experienced in several of the West I nd1a Islands ~nd on the ~1st of November, a violent one destroyed the capital of St. Domingo, Port au Prince. Part ~f the coast twenty leagues in length sank down and has ever smce formed a bay of the seat. Conception, 1750.-0n the ~4th of May 175~, the ~~dent town of Conception, otherwise called Penco, m Ch1h, w~s totally destroyed by an earthquak~ and the sea rolled ov~r It. The ancient port was rendered ent~rely useless, and the mh~bitants built another town ten nules from the sea-coast,. m order to be beyond the reach of similar inundations. Durmg a late survey of Conception Bay, Captain~ Beechey and Bel.cher discovered that the ancient harbour, whiCh formerly ad~mtted all large merchant vessels which went round the Cape~ Is now occupied by a reef of sandstone, certain points of which pro- * Michell on the Cause and Phenomena of Earthquakes, Phil. Trans., ~ol. li. P· 566. 1760. t Hist, de l'Acad. des Sciences. 1752. Pam. PROOFS OF ELEVATION IN CONCEPTION BAY. 441 jcct above the sea at 1 h . sh a II ow. A tract of a mowile- watde r, ht Ief .g reater part bemg very . 1 . an a a In 1e ngth, where, accord-mgfito t 1 or ve ; rheport odf the Inhabitants, the water was formerly four ~at oms eep · · ' Is now a s1 1 0al. The correctness of tins statement of the oriO'inal dept] b the ci. rcumstance, that theo laJ'O'e trad1 may e cone 1u ded from 1· 1 h' h frequente d t I1 e port could noto have ann gh v essde .s w Ic formerly fathoms water. Our hydroo-raphers fco uonrde thIn 1c ssf t 1I an fo.u r of h ard san d stone, so that ito cannot be suppose dr ete ht o cobn sist £o r~e d b d · e o ave een d y rec~nt ep~sits of the river Biobio, an arm of which b carnes B o~n ~o~e micaceous sand into the same side of the ay. esi es It Is a well known fact, that ever since the shock of 1750, no vessels have been able to appro·ach 'tl · ·1 • WI lin a m1 e and a hal!ff odf thhe abncd1ent port of Penco. That shock, there-fore, up 1 te t e e of the sea to the height of twenty-four feet at the least, and most probably the adJ' oin1'no- t h d • . 0 eoas s are m the elevatiOn, for an enormous bed of shells f th . h 1. . . o e same s~ectes as t ose now Ivmg m the bay, are seen raised above lngh-water mark along the beach, filled with micac d l1'k e t I1 at wI 1 1. c I h B' b' eous san 1 t e Io 1? now conveys to the bay. These she!ls, as wellha~ others whiCh cover the adjoining hills of micaschist to the e1ght of from one thousand to one thousand five hundred feet, have lately been examined by experienced _ ch o l o g1· sts m· L on d on, an d I'd entd· ied with those taken at the scaonn time in a living state from the Bay and its neighbourhood*. Ie Ulloa, therefore, was perfectly conect in his statement that t ~an·o u: h ~I· g1 1 ts a bo ve the sea b~tween Talcaguana and C' oncepa - tion, ' mmes were found of vanous sorts of shells used for lim of the very same kinds as those found in the adjoininO' sea ,: Among them, he mentions the great mussel called Chor~s a~d two others which he describes. Some of these, he says, are e; 1 tire, and others broken; they occur at the bottom of the sea in four, six, ten, or twelve fathom water, where they adhe 1 ·e ; 0 a sea-plant called Cochayuyo. They are taken in dredges, and l1ave no resemblance to those found on the shore or in shallow water, yet beds of them occur at various heights on the hills. "I was the more pleased with the sight," he adds, "as it * ?aptain Belcher has shewn me these shells, and the collection has been exammed by Mr. Broderjp, |
