2 STUART : THE' SRIMANGAL EARTHQUAKE OF 8TH JULY 1918. 
had been done, and furniture and ornaments overturned. It was 
not possible even to visit the whole of this area, and for the remaining 
area over which the earthquake was felt it became necessary to weigh 
quantities of unco-ordinated evidence derived from local sources. 
Such evidence has been furnished by a great many local observers, 
on earthquake question- forms. From these I have drawn freely 
for my information, especially where no first-hand information 
was available, and their assistance in compiling the accoimt of the 
earthquake has been invaluable. The number of such obsei'vers 
is so great that it is impossible to quote everybody, but it is to be 
hoped that all those contributors who have assisted me in collecting 
the material for this report, and whose remarks have gone without 
mention in this book, will not on that account conclude that their 
work was of no value. On the contrary it is just by means of a 
wealth of information that a compiler can with confidence give a 
general account of the phenomena concerned, a thing which he 
could not do from only one or two, often imperfectly agreeing 
accounts. I cannot leave this subject without expressing my grati- 
tude to the tea planters of South Sylhet for their great kindness 
in helping me in every way in my investigation, often at very great 
inconvenience to themselves, or without expressing my appreciation 
of the great value of such assistance in my investigation. When 
it is realized that the area of greatest damage lay in the tea garden 
area of the Balisera, Doloi, and Luskerpore valleys, in which the 
local authorities were unable to provide me with any means of 
transport ; that throughout this area most of the bungalows were 
totally destroyed, and the planting community were living in totter- 
ing leaf-houses, or hastily constructed bamboo shelters, furnished 
with what little furniture and crockery they had been able to dig 
out of the ruins of their fallen bungalows ; when one reaHzes that, 
to make their discomfort complete, the rainfall, at the time, was 
generally 3 inches a day ; their great courtesy, and the manner 
in which they provided me with transport, and arranged changes 
of horses to enable me to carry the investigation through as fully 
and as quickly as possible, cannot ever be sufiiciently acknowledged or 
appreciated. I should also hke to mention the great courtesy of 
the Directors of Observatories, both Indian, British, and Foreign, 
who have given me full descriptions and records of the seismograms 
registered in their observatories, and of Dr. D. B. Meek, the Director 
of the Alipur Observatory, who has very kindly had the Simla, Bidston, 
