EARTHQUAKE OF CEXTCAL TAPAX, 1891. p,]5 



lengtli. The rows of houses were tlirowu over l)y tlie sliocks, nnd 

 these twenty miles of iv^nd liecame simply a narrow lane between 

 tAvo intermina1)]e lieaps of délu-is (Fi,u'. 1, IM. XXX 11.). 



Gifn, tlie provincial capital, was for the greater part over- 

 thrown, and then burnt l)y fire. Ogaki, once the resident t(^wn of 

 the Princes Toda, seven miles west of Gifu, was entirely levelled 

 with the ground, and tlien also consumed by lire. Kasamatsu, 

 just ori tlie north ])ank of the Kisogawa, suffered the same fate, 

 and all that was left of it was a reddish coloured expanse of tiles 

 and rubbish. The fite of Takegahana was as bad, or worse. 



What has been stated can convey l)ut an imperfect idea of the 

 destructive woi'k done by the late great earthcpiake. Still greater 

 convulsions happened in the UKTuntain district of the Xortli of ^[ino, 

 traversed tor a distance of more than forty miles by the line of 

 fault, tlie birthplace of shocks, where all things were destroyed that 

 happened to lie in the proximity of the great throws of strata, to 

 which I shall have to retnrn in the serpiel. 



Professors d. ^lilne and W. K. I)nrton, of the Imperial Uni- 

 versily, have given a lively account of the subterranean convulsions 

 in " Th(' Great Eartlnpia],')' in Japan, 1801,'' illustrated with twenty- 

 nine permanent-])hotographic plates in hondoir size, well jna'nted l)y 

 Ogawa, and the ])receding statements relative to the devastations 

 are mairdy taken from this excellent work. 



The most dreadful e:u'thquakes within memory were the cata- 

 strophes of l(S54-55, well known among us as the ]'Jart])qiiah'.'< of 

 Ansei (/. ('., of the ' Ansei ' period), at which time Japan seems to ha^e 

 been the centre of universal earth([uakes. Poth years ])roved \Qvy 

 calamitous. Nice, Alexandria, and Turin felt more or less severe 

 shocks in 1854. During the following- year, 1855, X'ew Zealand, 

 on l)oth shores of Cook's Straits, was visited by a terrible earth- 



