The various incidents recorded by the survivors are full of fearful interest. At Iquique, according to one account, about five o’clock in the evening of the thirteenth of August, a rumbling noise was heard, then the earth shook violently for some minutes, then the sea, with a great moan, retired from the shore, and rearing itself up into a tremendous wave, rushed back upon the land and swept away the town. “I saw,” says one writer, “the whole surface of the sea rise as if a mountain side, actually standing up. Another shock, accompanied with a fearful roar, now took place. I called to my companions to run for their lives on to the Pampa. Too late! With a horrid crash the sea was on us, and at one sweep--one terrible sweep--dashed what was Iquique on to the Pampa. I lost my companions, and in an instant was fighting with the dark water. The mighty wave surged and roared and leaped. The cries of human beings and animals were dreadful. A mass of wreck covered me and kept me down, and I was fast drowning when the sea threw me on to a beam, but a nail piercing my coat, the timber rolled me again under, and I lost all sense. I suppose, as in all such cases, I must have struggled after sensation had left me, for when returning consciousness came I was grasping under one arm a large plank. Looking round, all was wreck and desolation. In a moment I was by a returning wave swept into the bay, and meeting a mass of broken timber, I was struck a fearful blow on the chin, and the broken end of the plank passed through my thigh. I knew no more until I found myself on the Pampa, and all dark around me. I was without trousers, coat, shoes, or hat. Trying to collect myself, I thought of another wave, and crawled away to the mountain side, scooped a hole in the ground, and got in; here, wet and shivering, I spent the night. My wound bled freely. In the morning I looked out and found Iquique gone, all but a few houses round the church.” A good deal of shipping was lying in the bay of Arica. When the waters first receded the vessels were all carried out to sea, chains, cables, and anchors snapping asunder like packthread. A moment, afterward they were borne back irresistibly by the returning wave, and dashed to pieces on the coast. One more fortunate than the rest, the Wateree, a vessel of war belonging to the United States Government, was caught up on the crest of the wave, and with the loss of only one man, was landed high and dry among the sand-hills a quarter of a mile from the shore.