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 founds beds of putrid
mussel-shells _still adhering to the rocks_, ten feet above high-water
mark: the inhabitants had formerly dived at lower-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 that the trees
beat against each other, and a volcano burst forth under water close to
the shore: these facts are remarkable because this island, during the
earthquake of 1751, was then also affected more violently than other
places at an equal distance from Concepcion, and this seems to show
some subterranean connection between these two points. Chiloe, about
340 miles southward of Concepcion, appears to have been shaken more
strongly than the intermediate district of Valdivia, where the volcano
of Villarica was noways affected, whilst in the Cordillera in front of
Chiloe, two of the volcanos burst-forth at the same instant in violent
action. These two volcanos, and some neighbouring ones, continued for
a long time in eruption, and ten months afterwards were again
influenced by an earthquake at Concepcion. Some men, cutting wood near
the base of one of these volcanos, did not perceive the shock of the
20th, although the whole surrounding Province was then trembling; here
we have an eruption relieving and taking the place of an earthquake, as
would have happened at Concepcion, according to the belief of the lower
orders, if the volcano at Antuco had not been closed by witchcraft. Two
years and three-quarters afterwards, Valdivia and Chiloe were again
shaken, more violently than on the 20th, and an island in the Chonos
Archipelago was permanently elevated more than eight feet. It will give
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