PREVIOUS NOTICES. 45 



south-west, showing that the undulations must have moved in the north- 

 west and south-east, or in the south-east aud north-west Hue, as the 

 general run of the cracks would, of course, be perpendicular to the 

 direction in which the wave moved. The ruins of the church show 

 that it was the former. A sight of the peninsula gives a miniature 

 view of the effects often seen in mountainous tracts of the break- 

 ing up of the earth's crust in former epochs by whatever cause. You see 

 a series of (so to say, mountain) ridges parallel to each other, one side 

 in each sloping up gradually, and the other, where the fracture took 

 place, going down abruptly, and so o£ each in succession. The phenom- 

 enon, too, of what is called in Geology an anticlinal line, was distinctly 

 visible in miniature, that is, the change of direction of the slopes, as 

 it were, on that line of fracture there had been a greater force from 

 below than on any other. There are still numerous accumulations of 

 the slate .coloured mud or sand which oozed up through the cracks. 

 It is said that Professor Oldham has taken specimens to Calcutta to have 

 them analysed. 



The bazaar is the scene of great havoc ; and in the fish bazaar, or 

 haut, between it and the river, the surface is gone down 40 feet or 

 more. It is expected that when the rains set in, this and other parts 

 will be under water, which have hitherto stood clear. The earthquake 

 occurred at a time when the fish haut is generally crowded with natives. ■ 

 But it is said that on this occasion it was singularly unfrequented, a 

 circumstance attributed to a panic which had seized the people that they 

 were that day to be pressed into service as coolies for an expedition 

 against the hill tribes, of which they already seem to have seen the 

 probability. But for this many might have been killed in the crowd, 

 heaped upon each other by the suddenly formed precipice of 40 feet 

 in the midst of the space. 



I have now given at some length every notice of this remarkable 

 earthquake which I am aware of. I have done so with the object of 

 showing how little even the most detailed of these notices afford of any 



( 45 ) 



