314 If'- T^*^TÖ: CAUSE OF THE DT^EAT 



IIÏ. The Great Earthquake of the lYlino-Owari Plain. 



It was on Oetol)er ^Sth, 1891, at (îh., :57'. H", when the first 

 shock of tlie great eartli([Uake was experienced, that l)eing' far and 

 away worse than <any of the many which succeeded it. It l)rought 

 down tlie liea^-y tiled roofs and stone-laden thatches, and in ;i 

 moment huried thousands of living people l)eneath them. At 

 Ogaki, (Jifn, Kasamatsu. Takégahana, and many otlier places, im- 

 mediately after the first great shock>!, fires bi-oke out amongst the 

 ruins, and many who might otherwise have l)e?n extricate<l were 

 bnrned to death. 



In the alhivial plain, especially in the neighbourhood of Xagoya, 

 the ground was riven with myi'iads of fissui'es ; small mud volcanoes 

 were thrown up along the Shönai-gawa, comparable to the sand 

 craters of Achaja, in (Ireece ; and for the length of a inile, near 

 Biwasliima, a suburb of Xagoya. numerous fractures made their 

 appearance in the banks of this river (Fig. -. V\. XXXI.). Here 

 too a very strange thing happened. There Avas a large bamboo 

 grove and a few pine trees, just at the west side of the embankment, 

 and this slid bodily some .s/.t7// J'crt back, the bamboos and trees 

 remaining upright (Fig. 2, I'l, XXXIL). In this figure will be 

 seen a thatched roof fallen intact, and it was in this manner that 

 most of the farmers' houses, which so tliickly covered the Mino- 

 Owari plain, gave way, and the country became dotted over with 

 tlieir roofs, which from a distance presented the a])pearance of gigantic 

 saddles (Fig. 1, Pi. XXXI.). 



Going northwards from Xagoya to (Jifii, we find a series of 

 villages, one running into the next; that is to say, there is a 

 nearly continuous street of ten r/, or more than twenty miles, in 



