During the dreadful earthquake which in 1868 raised the strip of land at the western foot of the Andes from Iburra in Ecuador, to Iquique in Peru, 1,200 miles in length, the receding sea uncovered the bay at Iquique to the depth of four fathoms, and then, returning in an immense wave, a mass of dark blue water, forty feet high, rushed over the already ruined city, and swept away every trace of what had been a town. One spectator, seeing the whole surface of the sea rise like a mountain, ran for his life to the Pampa. The waves overtook him. Fighting with the dark water, amidst wreck and ruin of every kind, carried back into the bay, and again thrown back to the Pampa, wounded and half-naked, he crept for safety into a hole of the sand, and waited sadly for the dawn. At Arica, the British Vice-Consul, alarmed at the first shock, rushed out of the house with his family, and made for the high ground, in just terror of the expected sea-wave. Through the ruined town, amidst dead and dying, half stifled with dust, they reached rising ground, and, looking back, saw a dreadful sequel—the sea rushed in and left not a vestige remaining of the lower part of Arica. Six vessels were lost in the bay or tossed over rocks and houses; an American gunboat was whirled away from her moorings, and laid, without a broken spar or tarnished flag, high and dry on the sand-hills, a quarter of a mile from the sea. As might be expected from the movable nature of water, the wave-motion of earthquakes is frequently propagated to surprising distances over the sea. The Chilian earthquake of 1835 produced oscillations of the ocean that made themselves felt on the Sandwich Islands at a distance of 5,000 nautical miles. On Mauai, the sea retreated 120 feet, and then suddenly returned with a tremendous wave that swept away the trees and houses on the beach. In Hawaii, a large congregation had assembled for divine service near Byron’s Bay. Suddenly the water began to sink, so that soon a great part of the harbour was laid dry. The spectators hurried to the shore to admire the astonishing spectacle, when a wave, rising twenty feet above the usual tide-mark, inundated the land, destroyed sixty-six huts, and drowned eleven of the islanders, though the best swimmers in the world. So far from its starting-point did the South American earthquake seek its victims. Fifteen hours and a half after the great earthquake of Arica (1868) the water-wave undulating over the vast Pacific was felt at Chatham Islands, a distance of 6,300 miles, and an hour later at New Zealand.