Abstract
UNLIKE their great rivals, the Himalayas, which seem to have upreared themselves to a position where they can remain at rest, the Andes are disturbed from time to time by tremendous throes, whose effects are sometimes felt over a full third part of the earth's surface. To this class belonged the earthquake of August 13–14, 1868, and in many respects it was the most remarkable of all the great earth-throes which have desolated the neighbourhood of the Peruvian Andes. As in the great earthquake which overthrew Riobamba in 1797, a tremendous vertical upheaval seems simultaneously to have affected a region of enormous extent. But terrible as were the direct effects of the first vertical shock and the others which followed, it was the action of the earth-throe on the ocean which caused the greatest devastation. It is hardly necessary to recall to the reader's remembrance the fearful effects experienced at Chala, at Arica, and at other places along the Peruvian shore; for few, doubtless, have forgotten how a countryman of our own described the ominous retreat of the ocean, and the over-mastering fury with which it rushed back and swept far inland, destroying at once the shipping it carried with it, and the buildings which it encountered in its course.
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PROCTOR, R. Earthquake Waves in the Pacific . Nature 1, 54–56 (1869). https://doi.org/10.1038/001054d0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/001054d0