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Elizabeth Barrett Browning: Arica
Arica is built on a flat beach close to the sea, and since, almost lifeless; that he took it home, and hav- was very liable to be flooded by the swelling of the ing placed it in a warm situation, and supplied it with waters consequent on an earthquake. It was always proper food, it recovered, and, strange to say, that shunned as an unhealthy and dangerous place of resiever since it follows him wherever he goes. As soon dence. It had a landing-pier, custom-house, and fort as he enters the boat it takes to the water, and never quits its element until he returns to shore. The boat is frequently manned without its preserver, but the sagacious bird never follows it unless he forms one of the crew. I was further told that when he left home, at any time, for a great distance, he was obliged to have it fastened up; and that, in one instance, he went to Montgomery on business, a distance of twenty or battery to protect the harbor. The roadstead was quite open, and much frequented, and the greater part of the foreign trade with Bolivia passed through it. After the shock could be seen the Pert vian ironclad vessel-of-war America, cast high and dry on the land, a perfect wreck. Also the United States war-vessel Wateree, and the British bark Charvasilla.
The United States storeship Fredonia, it will be rememmiles, and while in a house there he heard the accus- bered, was wholly lost, with all on board. The foltomed cackling outside, and on opening the door lowing is a description by an eye-witness, of the disfound that his old friend had travelled all that distance aster. Besides being graphic, it is exact, and has a in search of him. real scientific as well as a popular value.
On the afternoon of August 13th, as we were finishing our dinner on board the Wateree, at about twenty minutes past five o'clock, immense clouds of dust were seen at a distance of some ten miles south of Arica. This, of course, attracted attention as a matter of unusual occurrence. The volume of clouded dust came nearer and nearer, and it was observed from the deck of the vessel that the peaks of mountains in the chain of the Cordilleras began to wave to and fro like reeds in a storm. There could have been no optical shore, leaving the boats high and dry on the beach.
The water had not receded further than the distance of extreme low tide, when all at once, on the whole levee of the harbor, it commenced to rise. It appeared at first as if the ground of the shore was sinking; but the mole being carried away, the people on the mole were seen floating; the little pagoda used as an office for the captain of the port was also floating, and the water still rose until it reached a height of thirty-four feet above high-water mark, and overdelusion about it, for the sea was calm and the vessel flowed the town, and rushed through the streets, and of the waters took only about five minutes. was perfectly quiet. A few minutes after it was ob- threw down by the force of its weight what the served that from mountains nearer to Arica whole earthquake had left. And all this rise and overflow piles of rock rent themselves loose, and large mounds of earth and stone rolled down the sides. Very soon it was noticed that the whole earth was shaking, and that an earthquake was in progress.
By comparing distances of ports reached by the earthquake successively, and computing the time by exact measurement, it was ascertained that the volcanic element under the surface of the globe at that particular spot travelled at the rate of between six hundred and seven hundred miles an hour. When The water rushed back into the ocean more suddenly than it had advanced upon the land, and carried with it the Custom House and the residence of the English Consul.
This awful spectacle of destruction by the receding flood had hardly been realized when the sea rose again, and now the vessels in port began dragging.
The water rose to the same height as before, and on rushing back it brought not only the debris of a the convulsion reached the Morro, a rocky precipice ruined city with it, but even a locomotive and tender lining one side of the harbor, it also began to move. Pieces of from ten to twenty-five tons in weight began to move from their base and fall, altering the whole front view of that part of the coast. At the same moment the town commenced to crumble into ruins.
The noise, the rumbling like the echoes of thunder, the explosive sounds, like that of firing a heavy battery, were terrific and deafening, and the whole soil of the country, as far as it could be seen, was moving, and a train of four cars were seen carried away by the fearful force of the waves. During this advance of the sea inland, another terrific shock, lasting about eight minutes, was felt, the thunders of the earth and the storm of the wave surpassing all conception of human endurance. capped with a fringe of bright, glistening foam, swept over the land, stranding far in shore the United States steamer Wateree, the America, a Peruvian frigate, and the Charvasilla, an English merchant vessel.
At this time, all around the city, the dust formed into clouds, and, obscuring the sky, made things on land quite invisible. It was then that the thundering first like a wave, in the direction from south to north; approach of a heavy sea-wave was noticed, and a then it trembled, and at last it shook heavily, throw- minute afterward a sea wall of perpendicular height, ing into a heap of ruins two-thirds of all the houses of to the extent of from forty-two to forty-five feet, Arica. Men, women and children ran into any open space near at hand, and their shrieks and screams could be heard distinctly on board the shipping; even the Custom-house, built of iron, stone, and adobe, received a wide crack at the first shock. Shock after shock followed; on several places openings were becoming visible in the ground, and sulphurous vapor issued from them. At this juncture a crowd of people flocked to the mole, seeking boats to take refuge on "the vessels in the harbor. As yet the shipping in the harbor felt not the least commotion from the disturbances on land. After the first shock there was a rest. No breeze could be felt, no ripple was seen on the waters. The Wateree and the Fredonia sent their surgeons ashore to assist the wounded. Between fifty and sixty of the people of the town had reached the mole by this time to take to the boats. But the surgeons had hardly landed, and but few of the others had entered the boats, when the sea quietly receded from the T The Mother's Sacrifice.
HE cold winds swept the mountain's height, And pathless was the dreary wild, And mid the cheerless hours of night A mother wandered with her child:
As through the drifting snow she pressed, The babe was sleeping on her breast.
And colder still the winds did blow, And darker hours of night came on, And deeper grew the drifting snow :
Her limbs were chilled, her strength was gone.
God she cried, in accents wild, "If I must perish, save my child!"
Є She stripped her mantle from her breast, And bared her bosom to the storm, And round the child she wrapped the vest, And smiled to think her babe was warm.
With one cold kiss, one tear she shed, And sunk upon her snowy bed.
At dawn a traveller passed by, And saw her 'neath a snowy veil; The frost of death was in her eye, Her cheek was cold and hard and pale.
He moved the robe from off the child, - The babe looked up and sweetly smiled!