12 WILLIAM T. BRIGHAJM 



were levelled with the roofs of the houses, and many more shattered and thrown down in 

 part. Some were broken oflT several feet below the top, and, by the suddenness and vio- 

 lence of the jerks, canted horizontally an inch or two over, so as to stand very danger- 

 ously. Some others were twisted or turned round in part. The roofs of some hou.ses 

 were quite broken in by the fall of chimneys ; and the gable ends of some brick buildings 

 thrown down, and many were cracked. The vane upon the public market house was 

 thrown down ; the wooden spindle which supported it, about five inches in diameter, and 

 which had stood the most violent gusts of wind, being snapped off. A new vane upon 

 one of the churches was bent at its spindle, two or three points of the compass ; and 

 another at Springfield was bent to a right angle. A distiUer's cistern, made of plank, 

 almost new, and very strong put together, was burst to pieces by the agitation of the 

 liquor in it ; which was thi'own out with such force as to break down one whole side of 

 the shed that defended the cistern from the weather." Another account says " that in 

 some places, especially on the low, loose ground made by encroachments on the harbor, 

 the streets are almost covered with the bricks that have fallen." ^ 



All through the country stone fences were tln'own down, but especially on a line ex- 

 tending from Montreal to Boston. New springs were opened and old ones dried up. At 

 Pembroke, Scituate and Lancaster, in Massachusetts, chasms opened in the earth; and at 

 Pembroke " there were four or five of them, out of some of which water issued, and 

 many cart loads of a fine, whitish and compressible sand were spewed." In the harbor 

 the shock was felt by those in vessels as if they were beating upon the bottom ; and im- 

 mediately after the earthquake large numbers of fish came to the surface, some dead and 

 others dying. This was doubtless due to the unusual disengagement of carburetted and 

 sulphuretted gases from the bottom, by the shock. Several slight shocks were felt for sev- 

 eral months after this all over the country. 



The motion was much greater in the upper parts of a house than in the lower. A key 

 was thrown from a shelf in a southwest direction, although it could have fallen any other 

 way except southeast. Some bricks which fell from the top of a chimney, a height of 

 thirty-two feet, were found thirty feet from the base of a perpendicular. The barometer 

 and thermometer undei'went no change during the time of the earthquake. 



Mr. John Hyde says : ^ '' Many chimneys, I conjecture (from observation) not much 

 less than an hundred, are levelled with the roofs of the houses ; many more, I imagine 

 not fewer than twelve or fifteen hundred, are shattered and thrown down in part." 



November 21 and December 19 .'flight shocks at Boston. 



Januarii 2, 1756, a shock was felt in Boston, according to Keferstein.^ 



1756. ./ ' ' ' ' o 



November 16, 1756, about four o'clock in the morning a small earthquake, 

 which seemed not to last above two seconds. All I perceived was the rattling of the 

 window shutters by my ])ed's head. The sky was covered. Little or no wind. The 

 weather moderate. It was more sensibly perceived in other towns" [than Cambridge].* 

 December 4, 10" P. M., a slight shock. '^ 



Juhi 8, 1757, at 2'' 15' P. M., a considerable shaking was felt at Boston, but it 



1757. ■' 1 T • R 

 was 01 short duration. 



1 Philosophical Transactions, vol. xi.ix, (pt. l), p. 441. * Ohservations of Professor Winthrop in Silliman's Jour- 



' /-"'-. eil. n;il, vol. xr„ p. 206. 



' Mallet's Catalo2;ue. ^ Luc. cit. 'Loc.cit. 



