The detailed news of the fearful earthquake in Peru and
Ecuador seems on the whole to substantiate the first message by the Atlantic cable to the effect that the loss of life was greatest in Ecuador, though the greater number of cities seems to have been destroyed in Peru,—while, apparently, a very considerable area between the two tracts chiefly affected by the earthquake, seems to have been left comparatively at rest. We believe this is not unfrequently the case in earthquakes, the wave transmitted through the solid medium doing least mischief where it is at the top or bottom of a vibration, and just on the turn. In Ecuador it seems to have de- stroyed nearly the whole populations of Ibarra, Otovala, and
Cotocachi. " Where Cotocachi was is now a lake," writes one reporter,—with terrible brevity. In Quito the destruction was less, but the towns adjoining it, Perucho, Puellaro, and Cachi- guanjo, " have almost entirely disappeared." The deaths in the ruined towns of Ecuador have been so numerous that the survivors were compelled to fly from the stench of the dead bodies, which rendered the air itself full of poison. From Peru the story of levelled cities, of the sea throwing up vessels on the shore half a mile above the highest high-tide mark, of the darkened atmo- sphere, the yawning earth, and the terror and sufferings of the -fugitive inhabitants are sufficiently terrible. But as far as loss of life goes, destruction seems to have been at its maximum in Ecuador.
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