MORE EARTHQUAKES IN PERU.

Southland Times, Issue 1192, 7 January 1870, Page 3

MORE EARTHQUAKES IN PERU.

Just one year and a week after the occurrence of the terrible earthquakes by which they were destroyed, the cities of Southern Peru have again been visited by a similar calamity, though happily, in a mitigated form. Prom the New York papers we learn that from the 20th to the 24th of August last violent shocks were felt in almost every part of the south of Peru. The people were leaving the cities and taking refuge in the open /country. At Pisagua the sea fell 16 feet, and immediately, afterwards rose , more than 10 feet above its ordinary level. The most severe shock experienced at Tacna since the 13 th August, 1868, occurred on the 24th of the same month last year. The steamer Payta was some distance south of Tacna at the time, on her way to Valparaiso, and experienced the shock just 15 seconds later. Purser Richardson describes the effect of the shock a£ sea as follows : — On the 24th of August, ;at 1.25 p.m., being 49 miles south of the port of Arica, three from the mainland, and in 75 fathoms water, we felt a violent shaking, which lasted 50 seconds, causing a terrible panic among the passengers. It was followed by a succession of others, to the number of 20, though all of them less severe, until 3.40 p.m., when the last was felt. At the same time it may be almost affirmed that after the first every shock lasted from Beven to. eight minutes, with only a few seconds' intermission. Its direction is estimated to have been from north to south, for at Iquique it was felt with much less Violence at 1.40 p.m., that is fifteeri\minjates later, at a port which is only fifty-seven miles south of the place where it was felt by us; and finally at Cobija, which is 144 miles from Iquique, there is stated not to have been the slightest movement. The shock having been of the vibratory kind, considerable damage was done to articles of a breakable nature on board the steamer, its inventory being reduced to less than onethird ; for, notwithstanding that all brittle articles are kept in compartments two or three inches high, the shaking jerked them up to a height of five inches. An iron chest, weighing from 10 to 12 quintals was moved four inches from its place, six-inch cast-iron pl&tes were parted in two, the compasses were injured, and one of them destroyed. During the movement the sea boiled all around the vessel, and as far as the eye could reach, in bubbles from a foot and a half to two feet in height, producing the crepitating sound of a heavy rain falling upon water, accompanied by strange creaking and dull, rumbling noise, while the coast, of a broken nature, and rising to a height of 1800 to 2000 feet, became wrapped in a dense cloud of dust, caused by the detachment from its summit of large masses of friable matter, which, in its fall, mostly crumbled to powder. The; shaking was so violent as to prevent locomotion, obliging everyone to seize hold of something in order to keep his feet, for the vibration threw us to a height of two inches above the deckrv^~