186 Mr. Forster on Earthquakes — Salisbury. 
shore, ere the depth of water prevented my further examination. 
I was very surprised to see that a short way out the cable had 
been lifted clear away from its original bed, which, owing to 
the bottom being of smooth limestone and for some distance 
out quite as level as a street pavement, showed the impress of 
its own weight, which had been made during the fifteen years 
it had lain there undisturbed, and quite two feet west of its new 
position, about 300 yards from the coast, in thirty-six feet of 
water; the cable looked as if it had been bent downwards, but 
it was not possible to verify this; however, it was most interest¬ 
ing to observe the extraordinary condition of the level limestone 
rock at this point. Everybody knows the peculiar appearance 
a large pane of glass has when fractured. In the center there 
is a hole of varying size, whilst the cracks radiate from that 
center in all directions. So it was here with the rocky bottom, 
and exactly in the place where the cable originally lay , a large 
hole of some two feet in diameter, in which no bottom at sixty 
feet dould be found, now existed, and the rock all round was 
fractured as just described.” 
5. On the 15th day of August, 1886, there was a severe 
earthquake shock, the exact centrum of which “was in the sea, 
twenty-three miles from the port of Zante, between the island 
of Strophades and the Gulf of Arcadia. The concussion caused 
by the vast subsidence seemed to be felt the most severely be¬ 
tween Trepito Point, opposite Zante, and the island of Sapienza, 
to the south. It reached Zante with a long, swaying motion, 
increasing to a maximum after fifteen seconds, and dying away 
at the end of forty seconds from its first commencement. Zante 
divided the waves of vibration, part of them travelling along 
the sea by the northern channel and reproducing a correspond¬ 
ing echo in Patras, Missolongi and that neighborhood, whilst 
other waves passed to the west of Zante, in the direction of 
Corfu. * * * To the south the shock seemed to have 
been somewhat arrested by the rocky island of Sapienza, and 
the line of mountains behind Filiatra also reduced its intensity 
before reaching Calamata. The flat island of Strophades, only 
a few feet above the level of the sea, felt the shock with terrific 
force. *' * * At the moment the shock occurred one 
of the employes in the Zante telegraph office was in the act of 
receiving a message from Candia by the Zante-Oretaa cable, and 
