PREVIOUS NOTICES. 35 



to be that one and the same shock or group of shocks was experienced at 

 slightly varying hours over an area, the extreme limits of which from 

 north-west towards south-east must have exceeded 650 miles and in the 

 conjugate direction of north-east to south-west of more than 400 miles, 

 or, allowing for those districts over which the shock was felt, but from 

 which we have no reports, an area of fully a quarter of a million of square 

 miles, and independently of any other considerations, the immensity of 

 this area will in itself give some index to the vastness of the forces 

 developed. 



CHAPTER II. 

 MOEE LENGTHY NOTICES OF THE EARTHQUAKE. 



In addition to these brief notices in the newspapers of the time and 

 in the official reports of the engineers who had charge of the buildings 

 in the stations visited by the earthquake, two or three other and more 

 detailed statements were made public. H. Leonard, then Superintend- 

 ing Engineer of the division in which Cachar is located, visited Silchar 

 and Sylhet a very short time previously to my own visit, to whom 

 I am much indebted for having subsequently handed over to me 

 all the information he collected, most of which is embodied in the pre-, 

 ceding chapter. But he also made public his own impression. At a 

 meeting of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, on the 3rd of March 1869, 

 he stated that the reports regarding the severity of the earthquake, and 

 especially as to its action in rupturing the earth, were considerably 

 exaggerated, early reports were decidedly so, most people being so much 

 surprised and alarmed by the shock and its results that they seemed to 

 be incapacitated at the time for making anything like accurate observa- 

 tions and hence very great caution should be observed in accepting 

 information as to the intensity of the shock or as to the direction of 

 the wave. Highly exaggerated and most incorrect accounts had been 

 received by himself on the subject. 



Mr. Leonard was at first inclined to think that the point of greatest 

 intensity was about Silchar or more to the west, but on subsequently 



( 35 ) 



