330 MIDDLEMISS : KANGRA EARTHQUAKE. 



epicentral area, although numerous enough between isoseismals VII 

 and VIII, but the excellent cart roads that permeate the Kangra valley 

 and Dehra Dun are so common that it is inconceivable that any real 

 fault scarp or fissure with appreciable movement along vertical lines 

 could have remained unnoticed and unreported on, even if such had 

 perchance escaped the observation of the special officers who personally 

 examined the areas. 



There can be no doubt, I think, that the surface fissures in alluvium 

 .__ . , and soil cap which have been recorded in the de- 



All fissures in this 



earthquake secon- scriptive chapters of this memoir, are without excep- 

 dar y- tion a simple result of the shaking which such a 



mountainous area received by the earthquake, and no more point to 

 deep-seated fissures than do house cracks. 



In illustration of the same conclusion it may be further insisted 



on that the most intensely disturbed area lying within 



Surface intensity isoseismal X} as also that within isoseismals VIII and 



evenly distributed. 



IX, everywhere show a full and uniform measure 

 of damage spread evenly over the areas in question. They are 

 entirely without any tendency to lineally arranged series, at right angles 

 to which damage rapidly diminishes. Besides my own personal 

 investigation, the reports of the Punjab Government are quite clear 

 on this point, a point also which is the more convincing when 

 it is remembered that the Kangra valley villages are not con- 

 centrated centres of grouped streets, but widely diffused hamlets and 

 homesteads whose outskirts mingle. The descriptive -accounts in 

 the preceding chapter devoted to the isoseismals can only be understood 

 in this sense. 



From this point of view therefore the area of maximum inten- 

 sity cannot be regarded as a net-work or branching 

 Conclusion against system of near- the- surface* fractures, and much less 



the complex, near ^ ^^ ^^ q{ ^ intense destruction be 



the surface origin. 



similarly regarded as due to extended branches 

 from any central net-work or branch cluster. As already explained 



