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Dinesh

Dinesh club

Posted: 10 May 2022

Taken: 10 May 2022

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Excerpt & Image from •
Charles Darwin - A New Life •
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John Bowlby •
Darwin •

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Earthquake

Earthquake
Earthquake damage in Concepcion, Chile, February 1835
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 Dinesh
Dinesh club
On 4 February they sailed north 150 miles to Valdivia, an early settlement a few miles up river. Here the Beagle stayed for a fortnight, surveying up and down the coast, and Darwin had a further opportunity to explore the country and to be bitten all over by the local fleas. Here too they experienced a major earthquake, which did great damage to the town and reduced the bigger city of Concepcion, 200 miles further north, to a heap of rubble.

Darwin describes his own experience. ‘I was on shore and lying down in the wood to rest myself. It came on suddenly and lasted two minutes (but appeared much longer). . . There was no difficulty in standing upright; but the motion made me giddy. -- I can compare it to skating on very thin ice.’ In the forest no damage was done, and even in the town, where all the houses were of wood, only a few people were injured. Back in the harbour, the tide had been low: the water simply rose to a high-tide level and then receded. ~ Page 162

The effects of the earthquake at Concepcion he describes as ‘the most awful spectacle I ever beheld. . . The force of the shock must have been immense, the ground is traversed by rents, the solid rock is shivered. . . it is one of the three most interesting spectacles I ever beheld since leaving England -- A Fuegian savage. -- Tropical Vegetation -- and the ruins of Concepcion.’ ~ Page 164

Charles Darwin ~ A New Life
3 years ago. Edited 9 days ago.
 Dinesh
Dinesh club
On 4 March the Beagle had anchored at Concepcion and the following day Darwin and FitzRoy rode into the town. To Darwin, it was ‘the most awful and interesting spectacle I ever beheld’ – encapsulating the tension between the suffering and destruction they witnessed and their intense scientific interest in the earthquake itself. Barely a house was left standing, and the effects of the earthquake had been compounded by a massive wave 23 ft higher than the highest natural tide – a tsunami. ‘The force of the shock must have been immense,’ Darwin wrote to Hanslow, for ‘the ground is traversed by rents, and solid rocks shivered, solid buttresses 6-10 feet thick are broken into fragments like so much biscuit.’ FitzRoy interviewed local residents and recorded in detail the rising of the land by up to 10 ft. for Darwin having spent two years recording geological evidence for former uplift, the connection was obvious; he subscribed, with Lyell, to the view that the Earth’s solid crust rests on a core of molten rock, and a build-up of pressure could lead to eruptions, earthquakes, or both. . . . Page 144

DARWIN'S FOSSILS
9 days ago. Edited 9 days ago.

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