107 
in June 1819. 
The shock of the l6th was the only one by which the face of 
nature or the works of men were materially injured or changed. 
In the province of Cutch it may be fairly asserted that no town 
escaped feeling its effects, either in the fall of houses or in that 
of its fortifications. The capital, Bhooj, suffered in many re- 
spects more severely than any other town; nearly seven thou- 
sand houses, great and small, were overturned, and eleven hun- 
dred and forty or fifty people buried in the ruins; and of the 
original number of houses which escaped ruin, about one- third 
are much shattered. There are, or rather were, a great num- 
ber of fortified towns throughout Cutch, the works of which are 
in general destroyed. Thera, which was esteemed the best in 
the province, has not a stone unturned ; the town fortunately 
did not suffer in the same unparalleled degree, although few or 
no houses were left securely habitable. The total of lives lost, 
according to the best information I have been able to procure, 
does not exceed two thousand. 
As far as comes tinder our notice, the face of nature has not 
been much altered by the shocks. The hills, (which are most 
likely to shew its effects), although from their abruptness, and 
conical or sharp ridgy summits, and from the multitude of half- 
detached rocks with which they are covered, they might have 
been expected to have displayed strong marks of the convulsion 
by which they were agitated, have in no instance, to my per- 
sonal knowledge, suffered more than having had large masses of 
rock and soil detached from their precipices. I have seen none 
with cones flattened, or in any remarkable degree altered. At 
the moment of the shock, vast clouds of dust were seen to as- 
cend from the summit of almost every hill and range of hills. 
Many gentlemen perceived smoke to ascend, and in some in- 
stances fire was plainly seen bursting forth for a moment. A 
respectable native chieftain assured me, that from a hill close to 
the one on which his fortress is situated fire was seen to issue in 
considerable quantities ; and that a ball of large size was vo- 
mited as it were into the air, and fell to the ground still blazing 
on the plain below> where it divided into four or five pieces, 
and the fire suddenly disappeared *. On examining the hill next 
* Fire-balls are mentioned as having been seen to rise from the earth during 
earthquakes in other countries j and some speculators have collected together facts 
