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Nelson Evening Mail, Volume XVI, Issue 22, 26 January 1881, Page 4

! The South American War continues. :The details of the butcheries surpass' j credulity. An officer on board the- , United States warship Adams reports;! I from actual observation what transpired i in Arica after it was carried by'assault. ;The Chilians turned the Peruvians' ' flank, attacked their fortifications in the rear, and coolly pitched the garrison over ' the cliffs hundreds of feet high. Pie writes :— -Then began a terrible scene of rapine and carnage. I saw one spot in the garden of a well-to-do Peruvian where nine pairs of human feet projected from the earth, their owners being buried there alive, head downwards, by the Peruvians, some time previous to the attack. These men with some 200 men who worked on the Peruvians defences, had formed the crew of a Chilian transport captured and brought into Arica. When the Chilians ca ! ptured the city these prisoners were released, and pointed out the place of this inhuman crime, which, together with their recital of the cruelties and barbarous usage they themselves received, so worked upon the army that they burst' from' all control and shot and stabbed every 1 ' Peruvian — man, wb'man ;' and chiid;~ or burned them alive jn the buildings in

which they took refuge. The details of this butchery are appalling, and Would be held as impossible in a Christian country, yet the first and last glimpse of Arica shows its large cathedral^ as in all towns in this county , leading one to think its presence would in a fanner restrain these murderers. But the native population know no more of Christianity or its great truths than a savage of South Africa. The Chilians are here concentrating their forces preparatory to advancing on Lima, which is the Richmond of the capitaU The Sydney Daily Telegraph, m announcing the arrival on Sydney of Mr. Smythe, says:— ".Mi-. Smythe tells us that in his being obliged, for private '-easona, to decline accompanying Mr, Proctor to India and the far East, that gentleman at once telegraphed to the American Literary Bureau that he would arrive in New York early in February, and that organisation, in three days, wired back that they had concluded lecturing engagements for him in Canada and the Southern States of America, which Mr. Proctor will visit for the first time."