1843.] Memoir on Indian Earthquakes. 1035 



recent slip of the whole face of the mountain to the left. The broken 

 summits cannot be less than 4,000 feet high : blocks threaten to fall, 

 and are now indeed continually coming down : I have not seen so 

 dangerous a slip. The ruin extends about half a mile : every person 

 made the greatest haste to get past this horrid place. The fracture 

 of the rocks is so fresh, that I suspect this havoc must have been caused 

 by the Earthquake of the 26th, for we heard a great crash in this 

 direction." 



The whole of the gigantic accumulations of snow and ice at the 

 debouche of the Ganges were found by Captain Hodgson shattered and 

 riven in every direction, and so fresh were the fractures, that he attri- 

 buted them almost entirely to the Earthquake. These beds were not 

 less than 300 feet in thickness, formed of solid frozen snow, and ex- 

 tending for 4 or 5 miles, as far indeed as the bounding mountains 

 permitted. 



In the letter previously quoted, Capt. Hodgson states, " The Earth- 

 quake at Gungoutri was by far the most alarming phenomenon of na- 

 ture I ever witnessed, and the frequent, almost daily, recurrence of the 

 shocks, though slight, made us uneasy, as it shewed that there was 

 some active agent at work perhaps under our feet, which might at any 

 instant bring down the cliffs beneath which we scrambled along on our 

 hands." 



The range of this shock appears to have been the same as that of 

 1803, and its intensity could scarcely have been much inferior. No 

 accounts, however, of any destructive effects on the towns in the Hima- 

 layas, have come under my notice, although from the vicinity of 

 some of them to Gungoutri, they could hardly have escaped the effects 

 both of the vibrations and the land-slips caused by them. The dis- 

 lodgement of a mass of rock 4,000 feet in height and half a mile in 

 length, gives an appalling idea of the intensity of the disturbing force, 

 while it proves how very probable it is, that many of those sudden 

 depressions and elevations of rivers having their sources in mountains 

 liable to such convulsions, are caused by land-slips of this nature. 

 Captain Hodgson alludes to numerous other enormous slips observed 

 after the Earthquake, and to many he assigns the same origin as to that 

 above-mentioned, while others appeared older, and due either to previ- 

 ous convulsions or to the disintegrating effects of atmospheric agents. 



Earthquakes of the 21th and 28th May, 1817. — These two shocks 

 are recorded in the same Journal from which the preceding details have 

 been taken. They were both slight in comparison with that of 26th, but 

 still sufficiently severe to cause considerable anxiety to the travellers, and 

 to make them anxious to remove as soon as possible from the spot. 



During the same month in which the preceding three shocks occur- 

 red, it is stated by Captain Hodgson, that no less than forty others were 

 felt in the districts of Kamaon, of variable intensity, but none very severe, 

 with the exception of that of the 26th. 



From the year 1817 to 1831, a blank in the record of central Hima- 

 layan Earthquakes occurs, and if during that time any have been 



