1847.] including Notices of Sumatra, the Malay Peninsula, fyc. 551 



first shock was more severe than the second, hut both were slight, 

 producing no other mechanical effects than a tremour of the ground 

 which caused articles suspended to oscillate, stopped a clock, and 

 occasioned in some persons a giddiness in the head. The first shock 

 although only felt by a few persons in the plain, who happened to be 

 awake, caused the residents on one of the hills to spring from their 

 beds under the apprehension that robbers had attacked their houses, 

 so violent was the noise of rattling Venetians, bolts, &c. The undu- 

 lations on this occasion, as in 1857, appeared to be from south to north. 

 The shock on the morning of the 6th was experienced precisely at the 

 same instant at Singapore* and at Malacca, f The undulations at 

 Singapore are said to have been from east to west, very slight, and to 

 have lasted 8 or 10 seconds. About half a year afterwards it was first 

 learned in the Straits that a most violent earthquake had devastated Pulo 

 Nias, commencing about midnight, between the 5th aud 6th January, or 

 nearly the same time when the undulations were felt along the western 

 coast of the Peninsula. The shocks were at first from the west, shift- 

 ing to the north, but as they increased in violence they appeared to lose 

 any fixed direction and became a complete trembling of the earth, which 

 lasted 9 minutes ; houses were destroyed, trees uprooted, a portion of a 

 mountain fell, and the ground opened in wide fissures, from which " a 

 black frothy liquid trickled." After a brief interval of inaction, the 

 undulations recommenced and the sea suddenly rose in a vast wave 

 which rolled in from the south-east, overwhelming a considerable tract 

 of country and sweeping away whole villages and their inhabitants. 

 The shocks were felt at intervals of 2 minutes until \ past 4 in the 

 morning, when another paroxysm even more violent than the first took 

 place, lasting about 6 minutes. The shocks were from the west, veering 

 to the north, but changing directly to the south. Tremours of the 

 ground were experienced for several subsequent days. Thus the latest 

 earthquake that has occurred in this region was experienced in its 

 greatest violence a little to the west of the volcanic chain of Sumatra, 

 and the undulations were transmitted or induced so widely and so 

 rapidly as to reach Penang, Malacca and Singapore simultaneously and 

 at or about the same time when the first shock was felt at Pulo Nias. 

 It appears therefore that the volcanoes of Sumatra still communicate 

 * Singapore Free Press of the 12th January, 1843. (• Ed of 2nd FeUruarv, 1843 



4 c 



