of the aborigines, tells us,
that the Araucanian Indians, a tribe inhabiting the country between the
Andes and the Pacific, including the part now called Chili, "had among
them a tradition of a great deluge, in which only a few persons were
saved, who took refuge upon a high mountain called Thegtheg, "the
thundering," which had three points. Whenever a violent earthquake
occurs, these people fly for safety to the mountains, assigning as a
reason, that they are fearful, after the shock, that the sea will again
return and deluge the world.[692]

Notwithstanding the tendency of writers in his day to refer all
traditionary inundations to one remote period, Molina remarks that this
flood of the Araucanians "was probably very different from that of
Noah." We have, indeed, no means of conjecturing how long this same
tribe had flourished in Chili, but we can scarcely doubt, that if its
experience reached back even for three or four centuries, several
inroads of the ocean must have occurred within that period. But the
memory of a succession of physical events, similar in kind, though
distinct in time, can never be preserved by a people destitute of
written annals. Before two or three generations have passed away all
dates are forgotten, and even the events themselves, unless they have
given origin to some customs, or religious rites and ceremonies.
Oftentimes the incidents of many different earthquakes and floods become
blended together in the same narrative; and in such cases the single
catastrophe is described in terms so exaggerated, or is so disguised by
mythological fictions, as to be utterly valueless to the antiquary or
philosopher.

_Proofs of elevation of twenty-four feet._--During a late survey of
Conception Bay, Captain Beechey and Sir E. Belcher discovered that the
ancient harbor, which formerly admitted all large merchant vessels which
went round the Cape, is now occupied by a reef of sandstone, certain
points of which project above the sea at low water, the greater part
being very shallow. A tract of a mile and a half in length, where,
according to the report of the inhabitants, the water was formerly four
or five fathoms deep, is now a shoal; consisting, as our hydrographers
found, of hard sandstone, so that it cannot be supposed to have been
formed by recent deposits of the river Biobio, an arm of which carries
down loose micaceous sand into the same bay.

It is impossible at this distance of time to affirm th