48 OLDHAM : THE CACHAR EARTHQUAKE OF lUTH JANUARY 1869. 



was done; the trees were said to have swayed visibly, some few came 

 down, and the people were much alarmed ; but beyond this little more, — 

 they all ran out of their houses and of course cried at the tops of their 

 voices, so that it was not likely that they would have heard any distinct 

 noise which may have occurred. One rather more intelligent than the 

 rest describes himself as being- alone, away from the village and other 

 people; he was nearly thrown down, but was just able to preserve his 

 balance ; he described a wave as coming up from the east before or 

 almost accompanying the shock, which he described as marked 

 with successive noises ooom moom moom like the roaring of an 

 enraged bull. He was on the high bank of the river, and saw the earth 

 open before his eyes in three long fissures and suddenly sink down for 

 5 or 6 feet, and asserted that this occurred with the first great shock, 

 after which the second only led to a greater settlement of the disturbed 

 mass, but to no more actual Assuring. Even in the high flat top of the 

 bank, all cultivated ground, fissures could be traced within 100 yards 

 from the edge of the bank. Hitherto I had seen nothing to ac- 

 count for this Assuring, but that the banks of the river were unsup- 

 ported at the time in consequence of the river being at low water-level ; 

 all the fissures arranged themselves roughly parallel to the course of the 

 stream and bent round with its course though they were not so visible 

 when that course went in a direction approximately east and west, and 

 it was clear that the true reading of the enigma was that the bank 

 having been supported on the one side and unsupported on the other 

 had given way when the wave or shock came. But as I advanced up 

 the stream, and the bed of the river became more sharply cut into the 

 mass of clay and sand on either hand, the cause of all this disturbance 

 became evident enough. 



Probably the point, in the river, at which these disturbances became 

 most marked was just where the river divides into the Soorma, which 

 flows down to Sylhet and the Barak or Koosteara, which keeps on to the 

 south, and after winding in long sweeping curves through the flats of 

 Sylhet enters the Brahmapootra. The stream here curves round nearly 

 ( 48 ) 



