36a ADVENTURE IN NEW ZEALAND. Chap. XV. 
for about half a minute, and it was at least two minutes 
before it was entirely quiet. The people ran out of 
their houses, which were rocking and bending, being 
most of them built with very elastic poles and light tied 
roofs. Some were for running to the hills, some to the 
water ; but the motion was just enough to make your 
footing feel too insecure to run, and some people told me 
it made them turn sick. The river was covered with 
bubbles ; and a man who was standing at the bank, 
up to his ankles, washing a shirt, told me the water had 
suddenly risen to his knees, and then gone down again. 
In the morning some cracks were found in the mud- 
flat between high and low-water mark, five or six feet 
wide, and 100 yards long, and one or two smaller ones 
on the bank close to the water ; as they had filled up 
with mud, we could not tell how deep they had been 
at first. Some of . them, however, were still six or 
eight feet in depth. 
A few badly-built brick chimneys and clay walls were 
damaged, but no accident occurred to any one. The na- 
tives sat still during the whole affair, apparently (juite 
indifferent ; though they afterwards acknowledged that 
they had never experienced so bad a ru, or " shake." 
The most important effect appeared to have been the 
raising of many parts of the flat, on which the town is 
situated, a i^^iv inches, as they could now be seen from 
Putiki for the first time. • 
I have a notion that the slight shocks, very like the 
vibration produced by the rumbling of carts in the 
London streets, which we so often exj)erienced in New 
Zealand, are gradually raising the whole country, and 
that much of the present coast has been thus recently 
raised from under the sea. This earthquake was felt 
more severely about IVanganui than anywhere else. 
The cracks were less at TVangaihu and RangitiJcei, 
