an elliptical inclosure of stakes upon a trail; | house $10,000 was asked. Saloons, lager-bier between each pair of stakes is a slip-noose. A cellars, and barbers' shops sprang up like mushherd of deer is driven into the inclosure. They try to escape between the stakes, and run their heads into the nooses, by which they are entangled, held fast, and so fall a ready prey. The question comes back to us-"Was the purchase of Alaska a wise one?" Viewed from a purely commercial stand-point, the answer must be "No." That the fish and furs there existing are worth more than seven and a quarter millions of dollars is beyond question. But the Government of the United States can not go into the business of catching salmon or beaver; nor can it undertake to farm out this right to individuals or companies. The sum paid for the purchase will never be returned directly to the Treasury. But beyond the commercial view of the matter there is a political one. The acquisition of Alaska in effect places in our hands the whole Pacific coast of America. From the Arctic circle downward to the old debated line of 54° 40′ all is ours. Southward from this our present possessions, commencing at 49°, stretch downward to about 32°. It can hardly be doubted that before long Lower California will come into our hands, bringing our line down to the Tropic of Cancer. Then the only break in our Pacific line from the tropic to the Arctic circle will be the little strip now known as British Columbia, with a frontage upon the Pacific of barely three hundred miles. This, for a thousand reasons, the British Government will be glad to abandon upon any pretext; and so we, if we are wise, shall be able to say of the broad Pacific what the Romans were wont to say of the narrow Mediterranean, that it is "our sea." Whether in the purchase of Alaska our Government took this broad view we can not say. If it did not, it built wiser than it knew. To the foregoing paper we add a few notes drawn mainly from Mr. Whymper's book, for which no proper place was found in the body of the article. rooms. But men who came to buy furs for nothing found that the price at Sitka was-freight deducted-just the same as at San Francisco; as indeed why should it not be? The Russian Fur Company could send its "skins" to San Francisco, and thence to Canton, or London, or elsewhere, quite as cheaply as Meyer Joseph could; and so the return boats from Sitka to San Francisco were crowded with most dissatisfied personages, who went there to shear and found themselves shorn. At the latest dates every body who could get away from Sitka had gone. Russians any way went pell-mell. whole city could in January have been bought for a song. The The British Government seems once to have had a serious idea of constructing a great railway and steamboat route from Montreal to the Pacific. Several noted engineers reported about plans and surveys. One Waddington read his paper thereupon before the Royal Geographical Society. All that was wanted was to track the Great Canadian Lakes and the Saskatchewan River for 1249 miles, and then catch Fraser River, in British Columbia, and follow it for 260 or 280 miles more, down to Bute Inlet, in British Columbia. By this route, out of the 3940 miles between Montreal and the Pacific, there would be 2400 miles by water. And, moreover, "the fertile settlement of the Red River, now detached and isolated, would be connected with civilization and the outer world." We imagine that no one who has read the various papers on this vast region which have from time to time appeared in this Magazine will be inclined to invest much solid cash in any enterprise like those suggested by British schemers. Nobody within the lives of living men will go overland from the Atlantic to the Pacific except through American territory. The scheme to connect London and New York by way of Kamchatka was certainly absurd enough in itself. But the objections to the scheme were still more absurd. For instance, it was affirmed that a cable could not be safely laid across the narrowest part of Bering's Straits, because the icebergs sweeping down would infallibly cut it. To this there was given a quite satisfactory reply: There are no icebergs in Bering's Sea or Strait. The currents set into, not out of, the Arctic Ocean; and so quite likely the man is now living who will reach the North Pole by way, not of Green The fortunes of Sitka, the capital of Alaska, are worthy of record. When it was known that the region had passed into American hands every thing took a sudden rise. Keen Hebrew traders, knowing that furs up country bore a merely nominal price, and that Sitka was the great entrepôt where these were collected-a million of dollars' worth being frequently gathered there at a time-thought they could buy them for next to nothing. So prices of locations ran up to a fabulous sum. For a log-land, but of Alaska. INTERIOR OF THE CHURCH OF ST. ANNE, ICA, PERU, AFTER THE EARTHQUAKE OF AUGUST 13. "Dies iræ, dies illa, Solvet sæclum in favilla " year, and which were fast followed by fearful hurricanes, earthquakes, and volcanic eruptions HE twelve months embraced between the in almost every quarter and country of the globe, 18967, culminating ber, 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 earthquakes of the 13th and 16th of August, mus to the Cape. Yet their lateral action seems to have been checked, on the east certainly, by the chain of the Cordillera, and effectually stopped by the Andes. What tremendous force they exerted beneath the vast waste 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. Careful accounts of the various physical phenomena of the past eventful year are certainly a desideratum in science, for it is only through these that we may deduce their cause, or the laws, if such there be, that control them. But these are, from the nature of the case, difficult to obtain. Few men can remain calm and collected amidst the din and dangers of battle; fewer still can retain the self-possession and control necessary to note down correctly its thousand incidents. The hurricane and the earthquake are far more terrible and paralyzing than the shock of armies, for that very Nature of which we are a part seems smitten by powers it can not resist; the earth, which is our supremest conception of solidity, seems to give way, and the air, which is our symbol of softness and non-resistance, becomes invested with a dense and irresistible force, smiting and shivering whatever opposes it. No wonder, then, that the accounts which we get of these two classes of phenomena are often vague and inaccurate. Exaggerated they can scarcely be. Yet, with all these drawbacks and inevitable deficiencies, we are fortunate-whether as simply curious readers or as students-in having very full and clear accounts of the crowning catastrophes of the earthquake year. Without going into any speculations at this point as to the origin or causes of earthquakes, I can not help reverting to the fact that no part of the earth is more subject to these convulsions than the lands in and around the Caribbean Sea-the Greater and Lesser Antilles, and the coasts of Venezuela, New Granada, and Central America-except what, broadly speaking, may be called the Pacific coast of South America. Here they are not only most frequent, but most violent. How far the physical conformation of this portion of the earth may explain its bad pre-eminence in this respect I will not undertake to say. But it is boldly and exceptionally marked, perhaps by the very forces that now sway and harass it. Certainly in no part of the world does nature assume grander or more varied forms than in this part of America. Deserts as bare as those of Sahara alternate with valleys as rich and luxuriant as those of Italy. Lofty mountains, crowned with snow, lift their rugged crests over broad, bleak punas or table-lands, themselves more elevated than the White Mountains or the Alleghanies. Rivers, taking their rise among melting snows, precipitate themselves through deep and rocky gorges into the Pacific, or wind with swirling current among the majestic but broken Andes to swell the flood of the Amazon. Here, too, are lakes ranking with those that nurse the St. Lawrence in respect of size, and whose bosoms lie almost level with the summit of Mont Blanc-the centres, in some instances, of great terrestrial basins without outlet to the sea, and with independent fluvial systems of their own. ing parallel to each other, with interlocking spurs, through that republic into New Granada and the Isthmus of Darien, toward which they subside in height, leaving the valley of the Atrato between them. But even on the Isthmus, though no longer much more than ranges of hills, they are distinctly traceable, the valleys of the rivers Bayamo and Chucunaque, discharging into the Pacific, intervening. In Veraguas and Costa Rica the same relation is pre In this region of earthquakes we find also two great mountain ranges, which determine the physical aspect of the South American continent, and here assume their most majestic proportions. The western range, usually denominated the Cordillera, runs nearly parallel to the coast throughout its whole length, and at such short distance inland that, to the voy-served more or less distinctly, only the coast ager, the sea seems literally to break at its feet. Even where it recedes furthest from the shore, it throws forward outliers or spurs, which cease to be imposing only when contrasted with the mighty masses behind them. There is, nevertheless, a narrow and often interrupted strip of land between the Cordillera and the sea, which from Guayaquil, the principal port of Ecuador, southward to Chili, is as desert as the flanks of the mountains themselves are arid and repuls-flows into the Atlantic. Higher up, in San Salive. A waste of sand and rock, it is the domain of silence and death-a silence only broken by the screams of water-birds and the howls of the sea-wolves that throng its frayed and forbidding shores. This narrow strip of land, called the Costa, as distinguished from the Sierra, is intersected at varying intervals by valleys of great fertility and beauty, and often of considerable size. They are formed by the streams and torrents from the mountains, and are fed by the melting snows or the rains that fall during part of the year among the Cordilleras. Some of these streams are swallowed up by the thirsty sands before they reach the sea, forming oases, or green, cultivable spots at the outlets of the gorges whence they emerge. range is broken through, and the Andean plateau represented by the gulf and valley of Nicoya. In Nicaragua the lake of the same name is held at the height of 128 feet between the two ranges; but here the coast range sinks down into a volcanic dam, elevated but 43 feet above the lake, and but thirteen miles broad. The outlet of the lake, the Rio San Juan, nevertheless bursts through the eastern range, and vador, the Pacific penetrates the western chain, between the volcanoes of Coseguina and Amapala, and spreads itself out behind, forming the Gulf of Fonseca. Still higher, the intermediate valley, no longer lifted up in the clouds, as in Bolivia, Peru, and Ecuador, but low and tropical in aspect, is represented by that of the river Lempa. The valley of the Usumasinta, although opening on the Gulf of Mexico, corresponds with it in Guatemala and Chiapas; and the same relations hold good all through Mexico and in our own western country, where we find the same Andean plateau modified into the great Salt Lake basin-the Cordillera represented by the Sierra Nevada, and the Andes by the Rocky Mountains. The true back-bone of the continent is unquestionably the range that I have distinguished as the Andes, although it is not always the The Cordillera is a great terrestrial billow, bristling with volcanoes, active and extinct, and in almost every part showing striking evidences" divide" between the waters flowing into the of volcanic agencies. Although having an average elevation somewhat less than the Eastern Cordillera or the Andes, it is, nevertheless, the true water-shed of the South American conti nent. Atlantic and Pacific respectively. Its rocks, as a rule, are those that we call primitive, notwithstanding some of its loftiest peaks, like Sorata, are disrupted upheavals of sedimentary deposits. Few volcanoes are found in this range, and its The Andes, from which it is separated by the high Andean plateau, is pierced by num-flanks are seldom disturbed by earthquakes. berless deep valleys, through which most of the The Cordillera, or Coast Range, on the othwaters collected between the two ranges flow, er hand, and as I have said before, bristles with in uncounted streams and rivers, into the Ori- volcanoes, active and extinct, all the way from noco, the Amazon, and the Plata. But the Mount St. Elias, southward, through our own Cordillera of the coast is throughout unbroken. country, Mexico, Central America, Colombia, These two ranges, although in places sepa- Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia to Chili. It is rated for a distance of one hundred and fifty to throughout volcanic, as if overlying some vast two hundred miles, sometimes approach each fissure of the earth's crust, reaching nearly in a other more closely, and, at one or two points, right line from pole to pole, and as if raised by really come together, or form a knot in which ejections from the glowing and calcined matthey become indistinguishable. One of these ters and minerals that some philosophers tell places of contact is at a point known as the us are eternally seething in the bowels of the Pass of La Raya, at the northern extremity of globe. It is along this range and at its base the Titicaca basin, in latitude 14° 30′ south, that most of that class of phenomena called and longitude 70° 50' west. Another point of earthquakes occur. We know of no living volcontact occurs in Northern Peru, near the im-cano except on its line, or where it intersects portant mines of Cerro de Pasco, latitude 10° 15' the Andes. south, longitude 76° 10' west. They close again near Loja in Southern Ecuador, continu It is a fact with which students are well acquainted that nearly all volcanoes occur near the ers who infested the great South Sea. Around sea, and generally on the west side of continents, peninsulas, or islands. The rule is so uniform as almost to prohibit the explanation of the fact on the hypothesis of accidental coincidence. Various other explanations have been attempted, quite too numerous and complicated to be recounted; but that which meets the whole matter in the most summary, if not the most scientific, manner was presented by a certain Dr. Larreynaga, of the city of Guatemala, in 1845. Living in an eminently volcanic coun-is mainly if not wholly made up of the debris, try, this savant attributed volcanoes, and all the terrestrial phenomena called earthquakes, to the circumstance that under certain conditions of the sun and the sea the latter acts as a grand double convex lens of hundreds or thousands of miles of area, concentrating the sun's rays at the bottom of the ocean or on the shelving shores of continents with such tremendous power as to fuse them on the instant, and cause eruptions from the very heart of the earth, in the form of volcanic islands in the water and volcanic mountains on the land. the stones and soil, washed down from the gorges of the Cordillera, in some places much impacted, so as to resemble breccia or conglomerate, and possibly, for this reason, more sensitive to subterranean forces. The earthquake of 1746, which destroyed both Lima and Callao, and was felt over a vast expanse of country, took place on the 28th of October, the day of St. Simon and St. Jude. During the night, at half past ten o'clock, the earth was suddenly convulsed, and, as a contemporary with the event, writes, "At one and the same instant came the noise, the shock, and the ruin," so that in the space of four minutes, during which the earthquake lasted, the destruction was complete, and Lima reduced to a heap of ruins. Of upward of 3000 houses but 21 remained standing. There were 71 destroyed. Still, owing in part to its occurrence early in the evening, before the people were in their beds, only 1141 persons were killed out of a population of perhaps from 40,000 to 50,000. Seventy of these were patients in the hospital of St. Anne. As already said, the region of which I have described the topographical features is that marked by the frequency of its earthquakes over any other part of the Western continent. Running through the history of these occurrences we find two great centres in which their action has been most pronounced and destruc-churches, great and small, all of which were tive, and these, curiously enough, coincide very nearly with the sites of the capitals of the two republics of Ecuador and Peru, namely, Quito and Lima. A law seems to have regulated, approximately, their frequency. From forty to fifty of perceptible, and occasionally of startling, violence occur annually; and every thirty years or thereabouts, at periods coinciding very nearly with the life of a generation of men, a terrible and destructive one may be counted on with much certainty. The rationale of this kind of periodicity remains to be determined, but the fact of its existence, as we shall see, is well established by indisputable observations. In the great earthquakes of 1868, however, although Quito was severely racked, the centre of action seems to have been two hundred miles to the north of that city. Lima felt the shocks, but suffered little, the centre of action being apparently not far from Arequipa, three hundred miles to the south. The history of the terrible earthquake of 1746, with which alone the recent one, so far at least as Peru is concerned, can be compared, is very well known, but may be advantageously epitomized here, as illustrating almost precisely the phenomena that were conspicuous in the later catastrophe. Like most of the principal Spanish-American cities on the Pacific, Lima is built some miles inland from its port, Callao. Higher ground and better air were, to a certain extent, the reasons for this practice of building back from the coast; but the predominant motive was generally to escape from the attacks of the sea-rov The earthquake was felt simultaneously in the port of Callao, but with what force is not known, since almost on the instant of its occurrence the sea receded to a great distance, and then returned with such violence as literally to sweep the town, with its fortifications, garrison, and people, out of existence. Five thousand persons are supposed to have perished. There were twenty-three vessels, great and small, in the harbor; four of these, including the San Fermin, man-of-war, were carried completely over the town and its forts, and cast into the fields at a spot still marked by a cross, a mile and a half inland. The other vessels were foundered. Accurate measurements show that this cross here referred to stands at an elevation of a fraction over 137 feet above the existing sea-level, which has probably remained constant since the catastrophe. If so, the tidal wave must have been upward of 137 feet high, or else the earth must have sunk, for the moment, a corresponding number of feet. Terrible commotion and alarm prevailed among the survivors in Lima, accompanied with much robbery and violence, as is always the case in such disasters, which, so far from checking crime, seem to encourage, or at least develop it. So the Viceroy, Villa Garcia, had erected two tall gibbets in Lima, and others near Callao, on which he summarily hung plun |