80 OLDHAM : THE CACIIAR EARTHQUAKE OP 10TH JANUARY 1809. 



25 miles in the latter case. That the velocity of wave-particle should have 

 been much greater in the case of this earthquake than in the Neapolitan 

 one is, as I have already shown on a priori grounds, more than 

 probable. 



Yet although the violence of the shock was so much greater actually, 

 there is little or none of that awful interest which attaches to the 

 Neapolitan Earthquake of 1857, where the mind is bewildered by the 

 utter annihilation of so many towns and the vast destruction of human 

 life, that it can hardly look on the facts in that calm and philoso- 

 phical manner that is essential for a proper understanding of the true 

 course of events. Here it is but occasionally that we hear of lives 

 being lost, and but seldom of a house being overthrown. The reason 

 of this is not hard to find. Where, as is the case in almost all the native 

 habitations, the houses are built of wood and bamboo, their elasticity 

 protects them from overthrow, and where the buildings are constructed 

 of brickwork or masonry, they are mostly large well-built buildings, all 

 the rooms being on the ground- floor : a structure is thus produced 

 composed of a series of walls of no great height running into each 

 other and supporting each other against overthrow, and from the houses 

 being always detached from each other the fall of one does not involve 

 its neighbour in the ruin. When we hear of a building being over- 

 thrown, we also find either that it was badly built, or that it departed 

 from the ordinary style of architecture. At Yeddo chimneys were 

 overthrown, but the bungalows, though severely cracked, stood firm ; at 

 Silchar the cutcherry and bungalows stood, though more or less in- 

 jured, the only structures overthrown were some walls and the church 

 tower, which by its form courted destruction ; at Kochela a deserted 

 saw mill was ruined, but that again was structurally unstable as com- 

 pared with the average bungalow ; and lastly, at Manipur, where we 

 hear that the Rajah's palace was overthrown, we also hear that it was a 

 two-storied building. It is entirely to these peculiarities in the domestic 

 architecture of the country that we must attribute the small loss of 

 property and life by the overthrow and destruction of buildings. 

 ( 80 ) 



