THE ENCLOSED RY IPIORETRT NO. 3. 
21 
a space of thirty-one feet unfallen between each place where the 
bricks had fallen and the next. Plate 5, fig. 1, shows a photograph 
of the stack of bricks as it was after the earthquake. The peculiar 
wav in which the stack has fallen at definite intervals would appear 
to be connected with the anijilitude and rate of propagation of the 
large waves, but a;^ it would also be influenced by the natural period 
of of^cillation of the stack itself of which nothing definite is known 
no dedTK'tions as to the am])litude or speed of the large waves of 
the earthquake can be drawn from the phenomenon. 
In Sylhet the main shock seems to have been east and west, 
but considerable damage was also done in a north and south direc- 
tion. Practically all the brick buildings in the bazaar were badly 
cracked and very many of them fell. The musjid on the river 
front, near the dak bungalow was badly cracked and seven of its 
eight minarets fell outwards. The high School was exceedingly 
badly cracked and left standing in a tottering condition. Both 
these last- mentioned buildings came through the earthquake of 
1897 unharmed. The Circuit House, which is a lath-and-plaster 
building with iron framework, of the earthquake-proof type con- 
structed after the 1897 earth(juake, had its lath and plaster walls 
shattered. It is worthy of note, however, that well-built modern 
brick buildings were only cracked and often only slightly. The 
outer walls of the Jail facing ea'^t and west were both cracked through 
close above the ground and both had bowed outwards above the 
crack, the upper portion of the western wall which had bowed 
outwards towards the west having moved outwards through a 
distance of 4 inches in the centre of the arc, and the eastern wall 
in a similar way 1 inch towards the east. The bow outwards did 
not result in a perfectly symmetrical curve ; the radius of curvature 
was greater towards the southern end of the curve than it was 
towards the northern end, pointing to the existence of a north and 
south component as well as an east and west component in the 
movement which produced the effect. Speaking generally, cup- 
boards facing east and west were tluown down while those facing 
north and south were not. Just outside Sylhet, along the Peterganj 
road, several instances were reported of cracks from which sand 
and water issued. These cracks were, in all the instances that I 
saw, parallel to a road or embankment. 
In the tea garden area the damage seems to have been less severe. 
The two areas of which I have particulars are Langla and the 
