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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
tw o ! ” 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 is 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, hy
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 impracticabihty 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.
F b b r u a e y 2 0 t h .— 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
much longer. The rocking of the ground was most sensible.
The undulations appeared to my companion and myself to
come from due e a st; whilst others thought they proceeded
from south-west; which shows how difficult it is in all cases
to perceive the direction of these vibi-ations. 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 awe-
exciting 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
leve l; this was also evident Ijy 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 otlier weaker shocks, all of which
seemed to produce in the harbour the most complicated currents,
and some of great strength.
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