The twelve months embraced between the first of October, 1867, and the first of October, 1868, were distinguished by a series of physical phenomena more remarkable than is known to have occurred during any equal period of time in history. The series was grandly initiated and typified by the startling atmospheric and terrestrial convulsions that afflicted the Windward islands in the autumn of the first-named year, and which were fast followed by fearful hurricanes, earthquakes, and volcanic eruptions in almost every quarter and country of the globe, culminating with the great South American earthquakes of the 13th and 16th of August, 1868. These earthquakes, for their extent, violence and wide-spread devastation, will probably be regarded as the most terrible on record. They were felt, more or less severely, over an extent, from north to south, of more than sixty degrees of latitude, all the way from the Isthmus to the Cape. Yet their lateral action seems to have been checked, on the east certainly, by the chain of the Cordilleras, and effectually stopped by the Andes. What tremendous force they exerted beneath the vast space of waters extending from Peru to Cathay we can only infer from those tidal waves which broke equally on the shores of the Pacific Islands, and on those of distant New Zealand, Japan, and California.