EARTHQUAKE OF CENTRAL JAPAN'. 1891, 34|- 



ly speaking not very he:Tvy. Sfill it is not to bs supposed that 

 their liouses were entirely spared, the whole surrounding soil at the 

 time of the great earthquake heaving in a state of vibration and doino- 

 mucli mischief. There was terrible destruction on the line, as in 

 Tenjin-dö, a few hundred steps beyond N"agaminé. The next village 

 is N^agashima where the rent was to be seen on the road side. The 

 ground wns bodily shifted with the houses 2 metres forward, and subsid- 

 ed 1 metre on the riglit side. Turning off from the main course of the 

 Xeo, and passing over l^y a bridge to Xogo. we find the rent striking 

 acn-oss the mountain stream, depressing the eastern ])ortion of the bed, 

 and thus converting a torrent into a slow stream. 



Ivunning northwards, it enters the hill .at the l)adv of the 

 temple of (Tongen, having caused landslips all along its path. This 

 temple was founded in 717 in honour of the Tlongen of Haku-san, a 

 'lapanese deity in a ]^>uddhisr fn'in, and though small in scale 

 was of ancient date, having been erected in 1673 on the southern slope 

 of the hill, overlookino- the Xeo-o-nwa,. This wooden buildinçf of rare 

 anti(|uity f)r elapan was hurled io the ground in ruins, attesting 

 how long a period had elapsed sinœ a, shock of similar violence had 

 visited that quarter. Yet if we were asked whether the twin 

 provinces of ^lino and Owari were a place where earthquakes had 

 not been fre(|uent we should reply in the negative. In Japan there 

 are some seven hundred stations where earthquakes are observed, 

 and from several of them situated in the Mino-Owari ]ilain, we find 

 that in the six years from 1885 to 1.S90 the number of shocks 

 recorded in that district have been respectively 9, 4, 10, 1'2, 15, and 

 36.* Still going backwards in the annals of earthquakes, we find 

 again that violent disturbances took ]jlace in the district in 715, 

 762, 1596, 1707, 1723, 1819, and 1854. Many dwellings, store- 



*- Milno-Burton, Tlie Great E'trthqnnlie of Jnpmi, 1891. p. 6. 



