As to the height of the great wave along this part of the shore-line of South America, the accounts vary. According to those which are best authenticated, it would seem as though the wave exceeded considerably in height that which flowed along the Peruvian, Bolivian, and Chilian shores in August, 1868. At Huaniles the wave was estimated at sixty feet in height, at Mexillones, where the wave, as it passed southwards, ran into Mexillones Bay, it reached a height of sixty-five feet. Two-thirds of the town were completely obliterated, wharves, railway stations, distilleries, etc., all swallowed up by the sea. The shipping along the Peruvian and Bolivian coast suffered terribly. The list of vessels lost or badly injured at Pabellon de Pica alone, reads like the list of a fleet. I have been particular in thus describing the effects produced by the earthquake and sea-wave on the shores of South America, in order that the reader may recognize in the disturbance produced there the real origin of the great wave which a few hours later reached the Sandwich Isles, 5000 miles away. Doubt has been entertained respecting the possibility of a wave, other than the tidal-wave, being transmitted right across the Pacific. Although in August, 1868, the course of the great wave which swept from some region near Peru, not only across the Pacific, but in all directions over the entire ocean, could be clearly traced, there were some who considered the connection between the oceanic phenomena and the Peruvian earthquake a mere coincidence. It is on this account perhaps chiefly that the evidence obtained in May, 1876, is most important. It is interesting, indeed, as showing how tremendous was the disturbance which the earth’s frame must then have undergone. It would have been possible, however, had we no other evidence, for some to have maintained that the wave which came in upon the shores of the Sandwich Isles a few hours after the earthquake and sea disturbance in South America was in reality an entirely independent phenomenon. But when we compare the events which happened in May, 1876, with those of August, 1868, and perceive their exact similarity, we can no longer reasonably entertain any doubt of the really stupendous fact that _the throes of the earth in and near Peru are of sufficient energy to send oceanic waves right across the Pacific_,—waves, too, of such enormous height at starting, that, after travelling with necessarily diminishing height the whole way to Hawaii, they still rose and fell through thirty-six feet The real significance of this amazing oceanic disturbance is exemplified by the wave circles which spread around the spot where a stone has fallen into a smooth lake. We know how, as the circles widen, the height of the wave grows less and less, until, at no great distance from the centre of disturbance, the wave can no longer be discerned, so slight is the slope of its advancing and following faces. How tremendous, then, must