THE SOUTH AMERICAN WAR.

South Canterbury Times, Issue 2427, 27 December 1880, Page 4

THE SOUTH AMERICAN WAR.

The San Francisco aorrespondent of “ Otago Daily Times,” writes concerning the horrors of the South American War as follows :—The South American War still continues. The details of the butcheries surpass credulity. An officer on board the United States war-ship Adams, reports from actual observation what transpired at Arica after it was carried by' assault. The Chileans turned the Peruvians’ flank, attacked their fortifications in the rear, and coolly pitched the garrison over the cliffs hundreds of feet high. He 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 Peruvian defences, had formed the crew of a Chilean transport captured and brought into Arica. When the Chileans captured 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 Peruvian —man, woman, and child, —or burned them alive in 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 country, leading one to think its presence would in a manner restrain these murderers. But the native population know no more of Christianity or its great truths than a savage of South Africa. The Chileans are here concentrating their forces preparatory to advancing on Lima, which is the Richmond of their war.