In the year 1692 the town of Kingston in Jamaica was almost totally destroyed by a huge earthquake wave. A frigate which lay in port was carried forwards over the houses and stranded in the middle of the town. In his ‘Principles of Geology,’ Sir Charles Lyell relates that, during the Calabrian earthquake of 1783 the Prince of Scilla had persuaded a great part of his vassals to betake themselves to their fishing boats for safety, and he himself had gone on board. On the night of February 5, when some of the people were sleeping in the boats, and others on a level plain slightly elevated above the sea, the earth rocked and large masses of rock were thrown down with a dreadful crash upon the plain. Immediately afterwards the sea, rising more than twenty feet above the level of this low tract, rolled foaming over it and swept away the multitude. It then retreated, but soon rushed back again with greater violence, bringing back with it some of the bodies it had carried away. At the same time every boat was sunk or dashed against the beach, and some of them were swept far inland. The aged prince was killed, with 1,430 of his people. After the earthquake which devastated the town of Lima on the 28th of October 1746, the sea rose on the evening of the same day eighty feet above its usual level in the neighbouring Bay of Callao, overwhelmed the town, and destroyed nearly all the inhabitants. Of the twenty-three ships which were lying in the harbour at the time, nineteen immediately sank, while the four others were thrown upon the land at the distance of nearly a league. Shortly after the shock which desolated Chili on the 20th of February 1835, a great wave was seen from the distance of three or four miles, approaching in the middle of the Bay of Talcahuano with a smooth outline, but tearing up cottages and trees along the shore, as it swept onwards with irresistible force. At the head of the bay it broke in a fearful line of white breakers, which rushed up to a height of twenty- three vertical feet above the highest spring tides. Their force must have been prodigious, for at the Fort a cannon with its carriage, estimated at four tons in weight, was moved fifteen feet inwards. The whole coast was strewed over with timber and furniture, as if a thousand ships had been wrecked. As Mr. Darwin walked along the shore, he observed that numerous fragments of rock, which, from the marine productions adhering to them, must recently have been lying in deep water, had been cast up high on the beach. One of these was six feet long, three broad, and two thick.