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Show 368 VALDIVIA. Feb. 1835. on the road, and next morning reached Valdivia, whence I proceeded on board. A few days afterwards I crossed the bay with a party of officers, and landed near the fort called Niebla. The buildings were in a most ruinous state, and the gun-carriages quite rotten. Mr. Wickham remarked to the commanding officer, that with one discharge they would certainly all fall to pieces. The poor man, trying to put a good face upon it, gravely replied, " No, I am sure, sir, they would stand two ! " The Spaniards must have intended to have made this place impregnable. There is now lying in the middle of the courtyard a little mountain of mortar, which rivals in hardness the rock on which it i~ placed. It was brought from Chile, and cost seven thousand dollars. The revolution having broken out, prevented its being applied to any purpose, and now it remains a monument of the fallen greatness of Spain. I wanted to go to a house about a mile and a half distant; but my guide said it was quite impossible to penetrate the wood in a straight line. He offered, however, to lead me, by following obscure cattle-tracks, the shortest way; the walk, nevertheless, took no less than three hours ! This man is employed in hunting strayed cattle; yet, well as he must know the woods, he was not long since lost for two whole days, and had nothing to eat. These facts convey a good idea of the impracticability of the forests of these countries. A question often occurred to me-How long does any vestige of a fallen tree remain ? This man showed me one which a party of fugitive royalists had cut down fourteen years ago; and taking this as a criterion, I should think a bole a foot and a half in diameter would in thirty years present a mere ridge of mould. FEBRUARY 20TH.-The day has been memorable in the annals of Valdivia, for the most severe earthquake experienced by the oldest inhabitant. I happened to be on shore, and was lying down in the wood to rest myself. It came on suddenly, and lasted two minutes; but the time appeared Feb. 1835. GREA'l' EAU.'l'liQUAKE. 369 much longer. The rocking of the ground was most sensible. The undulations appeared to my companion and myself to come from due east ; whilst others thought they proceeded from south-west; which shows how difficult it is in all cases to perceive the direction of these vibrations. There was no difficulty in standing upright, but the motion made me almost giddy. It was something like the movement of a vessel in a little cross ripple, or still more like that felt by a person skating over thin ice, which bends under the weight of his body. A bad earthquake at once destroys the oldest associations: the world, the very emblem of all that is solid, has moved beneath our feet like a crust over a fluid ;-one second of time has conveyed to the mind a strange idea of insecurity, which hours of reflection would never have created. In the forest, as a breeze moved the trees, I only felt the earth tremble, but saw no consequences from it. Captain FitzRoy and the officers were at the town during the shock, and there the scene was more awful ; for although the houses, from being built of wood, did not fall, yet they were so violently shaken that the boards creaked and rattled. The people rushed out of doors in the greatest alarm. I feel little doubt that it is these accompaniments which cause that horror of earthquakes, experienced by all those who have thus seen as well as felt their effects. Within the forest it was a deeply interesting, but by no means an aweexciting phenomenon. The tides were very curiously affected. The great shock took place at the time of low water ; and an old woman who was on the beach told me, that the water flowed very quickly, but not in big waves, to high-water mark, and then as quickly returned to its proper level ; this was also evident by the line of wet sand. This same kind of quick but quiet movement in the tide happened a few years since at Chiloe, during a slight earthquake, and created much causeless alarm. In the course of the evening there were other weaker shocks, all of which seemed to produce in the harbour the most complicated currents, and some of great strength. VOL. IU, 2 B |