Terrible Earthquake and Tidal Wave.
THE terrible earthquake and tidal wave on the Peruvian and Bolivian coasts proves to have been one of the severest calamities of the kind ever known. Six hundred lives and twenty millions' worth of property were destroyed. At Mollendo a violent hurricane unroofed houses, while the sea tore up the railway. At Arica people were building defenses to repel the expected attack of the rebel ram Huascar. The shocks were numerous; the wave rose from ten to fifteen feet, houses, cars, locomotives, boats, etc., were tossed about like shuttlecocks. The shock continued all night. The volcano of Ilaga is charged with the authorship of the phenomena. At Iquiqui, at the same hour, 8:30 P. M., May 9, the shaking began. Amid the horrors of falling buildings and quaking earth, a fire broke out, and while trying to stay the flames the sea rushed in and swept everything away. At Charavaya the earth opened in crevices of fifteen metres deep. Two hundred persons were killed; dead bodies floated about the bay. The wave at Guanillos was sixty feet high, and that at Mexillones was sixty-five feet. A mine at Tacapilla caved in, smothering two hundred workmen. Cabija, in Bolivia, was swept of three-fourths of its houses. The wave was thirty-five feet high. In Chanural the shock at 8:30 P. M. lasted three minutes. A fire broke out, followed by a swamping by a rush of the sea. At 11 P. M. the storeship Huanullos, with Capt. Garvin's wife and family, was engulfed. At Pabellon de Pica and Chauaya some sixty workmen were buried under the fallen masses of guano. The damage to shipping was very great, some vessels being sunk with all on board, while the crews of others were saved on spars and planks.—Mirror and Farmer.