24 OLDHAM: CATALOGUE OF INDIAN EARTHQUAKES. 



A.D. 



1839- March. 23rd work is put up inside of them, which is always done now 



— contd. by any Burman wishing to have a pucka house. 



"There never was a correct list of the number of people 

 killed; but there must have been from three to four 

 hundred. Ava suffered most from having some brick 

 Kyoungs, where a great number of Poongyis were de- 

 stroyed." — Amarapoora, 24th September, 1855. 



In a MS. Journal of Captain McLeod, in the Foreign Office, 

 Calcutta, there is a brief and very uncircumstantial notice 

 of the same earthquake. 



" At about half-past one this morning, we were suddenly 

 roused from our sleep by two terrible shocks of an earth- 

 quake. Though numerous concussions continued to take 

 place, none were so severe as the two first. In the morn- 

 ing, not a pagoda was to be seen standing whole. Every 

 brick building in the town had either been thrown down 

 burying in their ruins numbers of people, or rent and 

 damaged so as to render their being taken down neces- 

 sary. 



" The pagodas crowning the height of Tsagaing shared the 

 fate of those at Amarapoora. In the neighbourhood of 

 the Residency, extensive and deep fissures had spread out 

 from which large quantities of water had been discharged, 

 and the earth in many places hove up with water spring- 

 ing up from the centre. The wells were choked up and 

 dry." — MS. Journal of Captain McLeod for 1839. 



Again he notices a shock of earthquake which occurred on 

 March 25th, during his visit to the King. 



He states that " the King of Burmah informed him that 

 their religious treatises told him that earthquakes occurred 

 every twenty or thirty years, and were severer on the sea- 

 coast than inland. The Burmese attributed earthquakes 

 to the movement of some animal in the earth, but that 

 foreigners maintained that they proceeded from the sud- 

 den union of certain matters in the bowels of the earth, 

 and as a proof of this hypothesis, that they buried 

 certain preparations in the earth, which after a few days 

 would cause the same sensation as an earthquake, and 

 throw open the earth, &c. That during earthquakes 

 eyesight grew dim, and an oppression in the chest was 

 also felt." 

 ( 186 ) 



