Just before midnight on Friday, November 10th, there was a
violent earthquake in Chile, which affected the whole country between Antofagasta and Valdivia, a distance from north to south of more than a thousand miles. The shock was much more severe in the north, where there was great destruction of property and thousands of people were rendered homeless. A large part of the town of Coquimbo was destroyed. No doubt many lives were lost, though the first reports were exaggerated. The chief feature of the disturbance was a series of huge seismic waves which flowed in from the sea and carried several vessels inland, leaving them in some places high and dry on high ground. The dis- turbance of the bed of the sea must have been extreme, as the captain of the British steamer ' Lobos,' according to the Valparaiso correspondent of the Times, reported that after the earthquake he found a depth of only 86 fathoms where 2,800 fathoms were marked on the chart.
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