Turning to the open ocean, let us track the great wave on its course past the multitudinous islands which dot the surface of the Pacific.

The inhabitants of the Sandwich Islands, which lie about six thousand three hundred miles from Arica, might have imagined themselves safe from any effects which could be produced by an earthquake taking place so far away from them.  But on the night between August 13th and 14th, the sea around this island group rose in a surprising manner, insomuch that many thought the islands were sinking, and would shortly subside altogether beneath the waves.  Some of the smaller islands, indeed, were for a time completely submerged.  Before long, however, the sea fell again, and as it did so the observers “found it impossible to resist the impression that the islands were rising bodily out of the water.”  For no less than three days this strange oscillation of the sea continued to be experienced, the most remarkable ebbs and floods being noticed at Honolulu, on the island of Woahoo.

But the sea-wave swept onward far beyond these islands.

At Yokohama, in Japan, more than ten thousand five hundred miles from Arica, an enormous wave poured in on August 14th, but at what hour we have no satisfactory record.  So far as distance is concerned, this wave affords most surprising evidence of the stupendous nature of the disturbance to which the waters of the Pacific Ocean had been subjected.  The whole circumference of the earth is but twenty-five thousand miles, so that this wave had travelled over a distance considerably greater than two-fifths of the earth’s circumference.  A distance which the swiftest of our ships could not traverse in less than six or seven weeks had been swept over by this enormous undulation in the course of a few hours.

More complete details reach us from the Southern Pacific.

Shortly before midnight the Marquesas Isles and the low-lying Tuamotu group were visited by the great wave, and some of these islands were completely submerged by it.  The lonely Opara Isle, where the steamers which run between Panama and New Zealand have their coaling station, was visited at about half-past eleven in the evening by a billow which swept away a portion of the coal depot.  Afterward great waves came rolling in at intervals of about twenty minutes, and several days elapsed before the sea resumed its ordinary ebb and flow.

It was not until about half-past two on the morning of August 14th that the Samoa Isles (sometimes called the Navigator Islands) were visited by the great wave.  The watchmen startled the inhabitants from their sleep by the cry that the sea was about to overwhelm them; and already, when the terrified people rushed from their houses, the sea was found to have risen far above the highest water-mark.  But it presently began to sink again, and then commenced a series of oscillations, which lasted for several days, and were of a very remarkable nature.  Once in every quarter