Ground Zero
In the 19th Century, the
Cachar earthquake of 1869, which did great local mischief, and the one of September
1875, which caused some damage to houses in Shillong and Gauhati, were notable
for their intensity[1]. But all previous
seismic disturbances were completely thrown into the shade by the Great Assam
Earthquake of 12 June 1897. After the
transfer of the District headquarters from Cherra punji to Shillong, this Earthquake was perhaps the second event
that transformed Shillong forever. It shaped the architecture and the layout of
the town as well as road construction.
According
to Henry Cotton[2], the Commissioner of Assam
(1896-1902) at the time, on 12 June 1897, there occurred one of those terrible
calamities which those who lived through it would always speak with a shudder[3]. He described Shillong as a
pleasant little station, which lay quiet and peaceful amidst some of the most
beautiful hill scenery in the world. Cotton
mentions in his memoirs that his wife had just arrived from England and was
busy unpacking at the time. They were pre-occupied with preparations for the
Diamond Jubilee celebration of Queen Victoria. Invitations
had been issued for a State Ball at Government House (the precursor to the
present day Raj Bhavan), and the residents of Shillong were busy with
prospective decorations, festivity, and entertainment.
According
to Cotton:
"The weather had been wet, but on this Saturday afternoon, after
two days of rain, the sun shone brightly and all were enjoying themselves in
the open air. My wife and I had just taken our seats in the dog-cart and were
starting for our usual drive. The reins were in my hand, the groom was
adjusting a defect in the harness to which I had called his attention, and
other servants and orderlies in their red and gold uniforms were standing by,
in accordance with their custom, to see us off.
Without a warning and with no premonitory rumble, such as is the ordinary precursor of an earthquake, I heard a clattering on the roof, I felt a swaying of the earth, and the high-spirited pony I was driving dashed off ventre a terre like an arrow from a bow. Amid a terrific roar of indescribable elements, we galloped along, missing by a hair's breadth the wooden railing on the winding drive.
The road yawned open with cracks beneath our feet, the pine trees overhead shook and trembled as though under the influence of a mighty storm, and the pinecones showered an avalanche upon our heads. The Gurkha guard was drawn up for the salute, and we saw the guard-house crumble like a house of cards as we approached it. It was more by luck than skill that we escaped a carriage accident, and I managed to stop the trap about a hundred and fifty yards from where we started.
The affrighted pony was then backing over the railings above a crumbling slope. I sprang out, and got my wife out, I know not how. We could scarcely stand. I thought the swaying trees would fall on us and, reeling as we went, rushed with my wife to an open spot before the flag-staff, where we threw ourselves on the ground. As I leaped from the trap, I looked back to where Government House had been, and saw nothing but a great pillar of red dust from earth to heaven.
We were safe. But what a terrible moment! The noises of the earthquake, blended with cries of terror, rose all around us, and the shaking of the surface of the earth continued, like the movement of some titanic piece of machinery. Gradually the crisis passed and comparative silence reigned. My private secretary hurried up from the Club, and others followed in quick succession, men, women, and children. Then the rain began to fall and continued for forty-eight hours without intermission.”
“At 5.30 on Saturday last, the 12th June was
as usual, and 30 seconds afterwards was completely in ruins. I was riding on
the Gauhati Road with Mr. Monaghan, and suddenly we heard a queer rumbling
sound and then trees swayed every way. Luckily by instinct we both turned
sharply to the left and galloped up the hill as far as we could and find a
place. We had crossed the bridge which would have gone down under us. I can’t
possibly describe the sensation as it was so totally different from anything I
had ever experienced. I did not know whether I was on my horse or not or on the
land or in the air. I could do nothing as the ground was all in a whirl. I know
I looked once at Mr. M. and he was as pale as death.
We neither of us thought of an earthquake, we
thought it was a landslip on the Gauhati Road. Of course, when we got up to the
mission we saw something of the terrible ruin, the poor missionaries, they were
all on the road with their houses flat on the ground and old Miss Jones in a
dying state. We stopped to make her as comfortable as possible and then rode on
towards the station (she died a day or two afterward). We could not go by the
ordinary way until we got to the ground as it was all burst open and there were
continued shocks the whole time. It was terrible riding home. Until we got to
the bazaar I never realized what must have happened in the [hill] Station.”
B.C.
Allen stated that the earthquake of 12 June 1897 was felt over an area of 1.75
million square miles, from Rangoon on the south-east to Kangra on the
north-west, and serious damage was done to masonry buildings over an area of
145,000 square miles[5]. The first shock was felt
at Shillong at about 5.12 p.m. John C. Arbuthnott, the Deputy Commissioner,
provided the following description:
“The first shock, which was comparatively slight,
was preceded by that rumbling underground noise since so familiar, but was
accentuated within a few seconds with such severity that every masonry building
in Shillong was levelled with the ground. The direction was roughly from
south-west to north-east. The Secretary’s (Edward Gait) residence on the hill
above the ward lakes, in which my wife and I were living, collapsed at once, as
we stepped out upon the lawn, and the magnitude of the disaster was revealed
immediately by the roar of the water escaping from the Ward lakes, which rushed
down a ravine, and damming up the stream Umkhra, destroyed the iron bridge
leading to the polo ground, driving the heavy iron girders a considerable
distance upstream.”
Many people lost their lives at the Secretariat, the military
lines and the bazaar. The London Times reported the death of 27 people in
Shillong, 13 of them crushed to death in the Government Press[6]. However, a year later,
Luttman-Johnson reported the loss of 10 lives at the Printing Press. The London
Times also mentioned an unnamed district town where 750 perished. This town
probably was Cherra punji where a
landslide wrecked the Cherra punji
Railway and caused 600 deaths. Cotton
noted in his memoirs:
“The little Cherra railway was destroyed and, though every effort to repair it was made, it was ultimately abandoned. A stray pony was utilising the broken-down terminus as a stable. With the aid of an elephant we traversed the course of the line. In places the rails had been forced upwards, as if by the expansion of the metal, and had formed a triangle with the ground, the apex of which was three feet above their former level. Occasionally, the embankment had been washed away, and the rails and iron sleepers hung in mid-air”.
“Mr. Robert Blair McCabe, Inspector-General of Police and an officer of conspicuous distinction, was found dead, horribly crushed, beneath the ruins of his house. It had been the Queen's intention to confer a: Companionship of the Order of the Star of India on the late Mr. R. B. McCabe, Indian Civil Service, in recognition of his services in Assam, and of his work of exceptional merit among the wild tribes of the north-east frontier of India.
Such was the notification which appeared in the
Gazette of India a short time after his death. I shall never forget his
funeral. We laid him in a sheet and carried him, stumbling over the fallen
cemetery walls through a tornado of rain, to his grave, which was already half
full of water — a tragic close to a career of the most brilliant promise.”
On 10 August 1897, The Times published letters from residents of
Shillong. Rev. G.M. Davis was quoted saying that his church became a heap of
stones in less than one minute. The water burst the bounds of the lakes making
them absolutely dry within seconds. There was sulphury smell in the air coming
out of fissures in the ground. He saw huge stones in the steps of his house
literally bubbling up and down. Mr. McCabe, the Inspector-General of Police,
who was sick and in bed was found crushed on his bed after an hour's digging of
his collapsed bungalow.
In describing the
earthquake to a gathering in the Imperial institute, Mr. Luttman-Johnson, late
Commissioner of the Assam Valley, said that at Shillong the earth was like some
vast piece of machinery in motion, so violent and regular was the action[8].
The marble slabs were pushed from the tops of masonry tombs, heaps of broken
road metal were scattered by the roadside in layers of a few inches deep, and
masonry boundary pillars only 2-3 feet high were shaken to pieces. Every
masonry building was levelled to the ground, not by overthrow, but by a
shattering of the wall into fragments, on the top which the roofs subsided. It
was calculated that there was a backward and forward movement of 7 inches every
second.
There were also several reports from Shillong in
Luttman-Johnson's paper. In one report, a young lady mentioned that there were
aftershocks almost every ten minutes on the night of 12 June and during the day
of 13 June. Another letter was from a lady who was in a house which came
crushing on her and who miraculously survived. The Deputy Commissioner of
Shillong mentioned the havoc in Shillong. Since he was unable to contact
Guwahati by telegraph, he had to send two constables to go to Guwahati, 63
miles away, on foot to gather information from there. He worked through the
night of 12 June supervising rescue operations.
At about this time Mrs. May Sweet[9] wrote to her sister Mrs.
Godfrey and provided the following information about the
unfortunate Mr. McCabe:
“Mrs McCabe is still in my basha[10]. She keeps up wonderfully - what an awful time for
her. She wanted to go to Mr. McCabes funeral but was not allowed - it would
have been terrible. They could not get a coffin so he was buried only in a
sheet and the grave was full of water. The men said they had never seen such a
terrible funeral.”
In 2003, Roger Bilham visited McCabe’s tombstone which
stands in the graveyard of St. Mary's church Shillong. The tombstone contains
four lines of a medieval hymn attributed to Bernard of Cluny c.1145:
Robert Blair McCabe,
Inspector General of Police
who was killed in the Earthquake
of 12th June 1897 aged 43 years.
Brief life is here, our portion,
Brief sorrow, Short lived care;
The life that knows no ending,
The tearless life is there.
The
New York Times of 17 June 1897, published an erroneous piece, headed “A Deputy
Commissioner Killed”:
“Simla, June 16 – The reports that all the buildings at Shillong
had been destroyed are confirmed. Mr. McCabe, the British resident Deputy
Commissioner, was killed by a falling house, and the English ladies and
children are suffering intensely from exposure. The towns of Sylhet and
Cherrapunji were levelled to the ground and whole villages subsided. The losses
are so great that it is feared a severe scarcity is inevitable in several
populous districts.”
Allen observed that the sufferings of the
people, who had suddenly been rendered homeless, were increased by the
inclemency of the weather. Rain fell continuously for 24 hours, and people were
compelled to seek shelter in huts, out-houses, and stables. Everything that went
to make life comfortable, including food, clothing, and bedding were buried
under heaps of stones. There was a temporary dislocation of the water supply, which
coupled with the exposure and hardship, was the cause of much sickness. Cotton
notes in his memoirs:
“It was most fortunate that the big earthquake occurred when it did, in the afternoon, about five o'clock, when nearly everybody after a wet day was out of doors. Had it taken place at almost any other time — and needless to say had it happened at night — the mortality would have been terrible. As it was, one of the most remarkable features of a disaster so overwhelming and so widespread is the comparatively small number of deaths which it occasioned. The ascertained deaths numbered only 1,542 — a figure no doubt below the truth, as it was impossible at a season of floods and downpours of rain to collect complete returns...
...The earthquake deaths were, however, immeasurably exceeded by the mortality from the epidemics that ensued. In Shillong — where there was a temporary but complete dislocation of the water supply — cholera, dysentery, and fever broke out in the Indian quarter, and much sickness, including a severe outbreak of enteric[11], laid many low in the cantonments and civil station.”
By far
the most detailed account of the earthquake is contained in Thomas Henry Digges
LaTouche’s field reports to Richard Dixon Oldham, then the Acting Director at
the Geological Survey of India in Calcutta. According to him, Henry Cotton initially
made an exaggerated estimate of 4,000–6,000 fatalities on the Shillong plateau[12]. The
final death toll in the whole of northeast India was fewer than 2,000.
The
Shillong cemetery still bears evidence of this outbreak. One of the graves
bears the following inscription:
In memory of Fanny,
who departed this life
through enteric fever
(epidemic in Shillong after
the great earthquake)
on 13th August
1897, aged 37 years.
As could be expected, the infrastructure took
a severe battering. Allen noted that the telegraph line was broken, many of the
bridges on the Gauhati road were wrecked, and for a short time Shillong was
completely cut off from the rest of the world. Telegraphic communication with
Gauhati was resumed on 16 June 1897, and on 8 July 1897, the road was once more
open to cart traffic. In this regard, Cotton stated in his memoirs:
“After the first urgent need of shelter had been met, the task of reopening communications was taken up. Telegraphic connection had been destroyed. The abutments of bridges had been shaken to pieces, and the superstructures had collapsed. Several miles of road had gone down the hillside, all roads were cracked and fissured, both longitudinally and lateral: and great chasms thirty, feet in depth yawned open in places. Portions of the road were buried by huge landslips. Other portions, which ran along level ground, presented the rough appearance of a ploughed field. It will serve to illustrate the force of the shock when I say that all the stacks of metal on the roadside were levelled as though the metal had been spread by hand.
The difficulty of re-establishing communications was enormous. It
could only be overcome gradually; but it was done in a manner reflecting the
highest credit upon Walter Nightingale, the Chief Engineer, and the other
Engineers of the Public Works Department.”
Cotton described the aftermath in detail:
“Darkness was closing in: we had to find some shelter for the night. Government House was a heap of ruins, not one stone standing upon another, and all the masonry houses of Shillong were in a similar plight. My servants and the Gurkha guard tore away the stones from a fallen outhouse in which our camp equipment was stored, and managed to extract three servants' tents, which were rapidly pitched and afforded a refuge. Kindly Samaritans whose houses had not been so completely wrecked as ours found us food. Ten or twelve persons remained huddled up in each of these small tents that night.
There was little sleep for any: the earth was in constant tremor, and five minutes did not elapse without a specific shock with its subterranean rumble, and the clattering of the fallen corrugated iron roofs among the adjoining ruins. We kept up a bonfire until the morning, which we fed with the shattered furniture and broken woodwork of the house. Above all was the anxiety for others, for the world outside, which was not relieved until eight days had passed.”
The damage done to Shillong was considerable. Cotton provides the following glimpse:
“I found time to visit many parts of the station. It was a scene of deplorable desolation and distress. Only a very small section of the community had sought a refuge with us in the Government House grounds. Most took shelter as they could find it, in the wooden cricket ground pavilion, which had not subsided, and in sheds in the bazar: others were in their mat-walled stables or coach-houses. The position of all, and especially of delicate ladies and children exposed to the elements, was the most pitiable one.
All had their stories of horror to narrate. Some had been out riding, some bicycling; some had been walking, and, clinging from tree to tree for protection, had fallen to the ground; a set had been playing lawn tennis when the court crumbled away under their feet; others had been golfing and had fallen prone upon the links; a family saved themselves by rushing out of their house and rolling down the steps; the inmates of the Club just escaped by tumbling out of doors. Women were crying out that the Day of Judgment had come. It was no disgrace for the boldest of men to turn pale, or of the nerves of the strongest to be unstrung.
The Government Press was full of compositors, engaged in printing the Gazette when the building fell in on them. Fatigue parties of sepoys were employed all night in endeavouring to extricate those who were entombed and might still be alive. It was a ghastly sight to witness the dead dragged forth, and the pallid, staggering forms of the survivors. The gallant little Gurkhas worked indefatigably amid drenching rain and depressing darkness and earth tremors...
...The great embankment which closed in the beautiful Shillong Lakes had collapsed with a terrific roar; the water, pouring down a ravine, rushed up the river below and destroyed an iron bridge, carrying the heavy girders a considerable distance upstream.
The native bazar was in ruins. The jail, with all other public buildings, had fallen, and the panic-stricken prisoners spent the night in the open. Such was the fear on them that not one attempted to regain his freedom. The immediate result of the catastrophe was a houseless population, without any change of raiment for day or night, exposed to fury of the rains, destitute of food, and many of them wounded, crushed, or dying. The most urgent need was to house the houseless, to feed the people, and to restore communications.”
Allen noted that to people living in the
neighbourhood of Shillong it was a positive source of wealth as labour for some
time commanded fancy prices. Importantly, the station was soon rebuilt and in a
very short space of time there was nothing to suggest that such a thing as an
earthquake had ever taken place. According to Cotton:
“My officers showed admirable presence of mind, and laboured unceasingly. There was no hesitancy or faint heartedness on the part of any one. Temporary huts were run up in a few days, and a loan was offered from the Treasury to the bazar merchants with a view to the importation of grain. Looting, which had prevailed somewhat extensively on the night of the earthquake and I am afraid it was white men who were to blame was prevented. One of the earliest measures I took was to assign to every officer his own special duty in repairing damages and restoring confidence.
Every officer, whatever his ordinary duties, was made available for the task of rendering assistance. An Examiner of Accounts was set to remove ruins; Forest Officers and Accounts Officers were employed in clearing the roads; the Officers of the Regiment supervised the work of their sepoys in building huts; Magistrates became foremen of coolie gangs; and my Assistant Secretary was converted into a most efficient Conservancy Overseer. Every man was placed at his post, and all worked with their might.
Above all, Major Neil Campbell, the Civil Surgeon of the station, and John C. Arbuthnott, the Deputy Commissioner — both of whom I am glad to say afterwards received a decoration for their services — never spared themselves, and day and night were continually at work, encouraging others and setting an example to everyone by their sense of duty and self-devotion.
Of the Indian staff also I can speak in the highest terms. Although their own losses were great, they devoted themselves to the public service unremittingly and without complaining. It was due to their cooperation with the unweary efforts of Edward Gait, my Chief Secretary, and to that officer's power of organisation that the records were salvaged with little loss, and that current work was promptly resumed. Not a single table or chair came out unbroken from the wreck of the Secretariat, and yet within ten days from the earthquake the office establishment was dealing with current cases.”
As Assam is well known as a region of seismic disturbance, and earthquakes before this were not uncommon; but they had never been known on any previous occasion to cause widespread destruction. The area over which this earthquake was felt is prodigious. It was estimated on scientific authority to have extended over a tract of nearly 1,500 miles in length and 1,000 in width, or about 1,275,000 square miles. The area over which the shock was destructive is believed to be unique, and the focus from which it radiated was in the neighbourhood of Shillong.
The earthquake was said by the learned Japanese expert, Professor Omori, who was specially sent by his Government to inquire and report, to be due to a fault in the earth's crust about twenty miles below the surface and to be non-volcanic, and thus of a different type from those great cataclysms which have taken place at Krakatoa and in Japan itself. The character of the shock was everywhere much the same, though varying in degree — a sharp vibration accompanied by a rocking or heaving of the earth and a loud rumbling noise.
In the hills, gigantic landslips plunged mountain-sides in ruin and buried villages beneath them. It is difficult to define the duration of the great shock; but I do not think it lasted for more than three minutes, and the period of extreme intensity was probably limited to about thirty seconds. But this half-minute's disturbance of the earth's crust was sufficient to cover it with ruins. The fall of Government House, a large and straggling masonry building, must have been complete within ten seconds.
But after the great disturbance definite shocks were incessant for about a week, and the earth tremor went on continuously for a longer period. In Shillong itself it was estimated that there were two hundred shocks a day for a few days after the 12th of June; these had gradually diminished to twenty or thirty shocks a day by the middle of July. Then they became fewer; but for at least two years after the earthquake we were accustomed to a daily shock.
Occasionally these were of alarming intensity, but familiarity led to their being treated with contempt. My youngest son, out on a visit from home, was staying with us during the cold weather of 1898. We were on tour, and he was sitting reading in the veranda, while I was writing inside the official Circuit House. A somewhat severe shock occurred; and it is a family tradition that as he sprang from his chair I called to him, “Don't be afraid, Bertie; it is only an earthquake!”
Shocks had become rare when I left Assam at the end of April, 1902; but I may safely estimate that we acquired an experience of about four thousand quakes. Professor Omori had been good enough to explain to us that these after-shocks were merely the residual effects of the first big disturbance, subject to definite laws, and had nothing dangerous in their character. In fact, we were assured that they were absolutely necessary in the ordinary course of things, as by their means the disturbed earth crust was gradually settling itself into its final stable position, and that each after-shock meant the removal of one residual weak point. So we never minded them at all, and earthquakes became an accustomed element in the routine of life.
The population at large, although completely cowed at first by the effects of such an unprecedented phenomenon, very soon displayed their usual patience and, calmness, and resumed their occupations as though nothing had happed. The catastrophe was one which principally affected the few wealthy and well-to-do persons who reside in masonry dwellings. The poor, who live in mat huts, did not suffer so directly from the shock itself.
Tea plantations were damaged in some places, but this great industry escaped as a whole without serious injury. The losses sustained by the province were, however immense. I am afraid that in the interests of the province I was not altogether wise in the studied moderation with which I reported our difficulties. Nothing could have exceeded the personal sympathy of Lord Elgin, and that was felt at the time to be a great support. But I venture now to say that we received no adequate assistance from the Government of India.
When I went down to Calcutta at Christmas I bearded the Finance Minister in his den, but he would give me no satisfaction. I appealed to Caesar, and got some concessions from the Viceroy, but they were quite insufficient for the needs of the province. It was not until I was leaving Assam, and had no control over the distribution of funds, that Lord Curzon placed supplies at my disposal. The finances of the province during the whole period of my charge were paralysed by the necessity of restoring public works to their former condition, and the dial of progress was set back.
As soon as I could leave headquarters and had made some provisional arrangements for sheltering my wife, whose nerves were badly shattered by what she had gone through, I proceeded on tour during August and September to examine with my own eyes the damage done by the earthquake in all parts of the province. This was a most interesting experience, and it was absolutely necessary that I should go, although the exposure I went through, following on what I had already undergone, resulted in, my health being permanently affected.
I was accompanied by Nightingale, the chief engineer, and could not have had a more cheery companion...The appearance of the southern range of the Khasi Hills — the precipitous sides of which had been scarred as far as the eye could see by numerous and extensive landslips, resembling glaciers tunning down into the valleys;— bore eloquent testimony to the tremendous character of the shock, and left no room for doubt that the centre or focus of the disturbance was to be placed among these hills.
The most permanent and disastrous consequence of the earthquake undoubtedly consisted in the raising of river beds and the obstruction of drainage channels. It so happened that the rainfall that year was quite exceptional, and we witnessed from the foot of the hills at Cherrapunji a downpour of eighty inches in three days...
...From a place called Chhatak, the centre of the limestone industry, we embarked on a day of inspection in drenching rain. Starting at daybreak, in three small country boats, we arrived at our destination after a seven hours' journey. Our difficulties were serious, for the rapids were exceedingly violent, and one of the boats containing our luncheon was lost, while the occupants had a narrow escape, clinging to the boughs of trees till they were rescued.
The channels were blocked with debris and silt, and immense quantities of huge drift timber had come down with the landslips. The beautiful orange groves, which were so marked a feature of this tract, were a sea of ruin. The whole country was covered with sand, and the floods found no other way of outlet than over the surface of the plain. In one place where there had been a crystal pool forty feet deep and a noted resort for fishermen, I was able to cross without wetting myself above the knees. The return journey was accomplished in four and a half hours, and the shooting of the rapids among trees and snags, though dangerous, was accomplished with no further, mishap.
The flag of Great Britain never ceased to fly on the Government House flag-staff, in the centre of wreck and desolation. It was the token of the spirit by which all my officers were animated. Everything that could be done by them was done — quietly, effectively, and promptly.
When I left the province no trace remained of the catastrophe. Shillong was more beautiful than it had ever been. Houses, public buildings, churches, and jails had been rebuilt. The new roads and bridges were better than the old ones. The whirligig of time had removed from the province most of those who had borne the brunt of the shock. But the great earthquake will never be forgotten. Its memory will live beyond the lives of those men and women on whom it is indelibly impressed. It was a great calamity.
"Quo bruta tellus et vaga flumina
Quo Styx et invisi horrida Taenari
Sedes Atlanteusque finis
Concutitur."
Whereby heavy
earth and wandering river
Whereby river
Styx and detested wild lower-world/Hades
Home of Atlas
ends
Shake
At about quarter past five
in the afternoon of 12 June 1897, there burst on the western portion of Assam
an earthquake which, for violence and extent, had not been surpassed by any on
record[14]. Lasting about two and a half minutes, it had not ceased at Shillong
before an area of 150,000 square miles had been laid in ruins, all means of
communication interrupted, the hills rent and cast down in landslips, and the
plains fissured and riddled with vents, from which sand and water poured out in
most astounding quantities. Shillong was laid in ruins in ten minutes, before
about 1.75 million square miles had felt a shock which was everywhere
recognised as one quite out of the ordinary.
In Shillong, a few persons felt tremors a few days previously, but according
to Oldham, these must have been barely perceptible. On 11 June 1897, a severe
shock commenced without any warning and some people noticed a rumbling sound
for 10 or 15 seconds before the shock. All the accounts from Shillong concurred that the first indication was a
rumbling sound, like that of a rapidly moving cart. A Mr. R. S, Strachey, who
was riding at the time on Shillong Peak, some 1,400 feet above Shillong, stated
that his attention was first attracted by the rustling.
In Shillong,
there was a tremendous rumbling noise, like a thousand ships' engines thumping
away in the midst of a storm at sea[15]. Mr. F. Smith
of the Geological Survey of India who was stationed in Shillong at the time,
was of the view that the whole of the damage was done in the first 10 or 15
seconds of the shock. He reported that all the stone buildings had collapsed,
and about half the ekra built houses
(wooden frame, reed walls covered with plaster) were ruined, but plank houses
(wooden frames covered with plank walls, resting unattached on the ground) were
untouched.
The shock was of considerable duration, and maintained roughly the same
amount of violence from the beginning to the end. It produced a very distinct
sensation of sea-sickness. The earth movement was exceedingly sudden and
violent. The feeling was as if the ground was being violently jerked backwards
and forwards very rapidly, every third or fourth jerk being of greater scope
than the intermediate ones[16].
Oldham reported that the
surface of the ground vibrated visibly in every direction, as if it was made of
soft jelly, and long cracks appeared at once along the road. The sloping
earth-bank round the water tank, which was some l0 feet high, began to shake
down, and at one point cracked and opened out. The road was bounded
intermittently by low banks of earth, about 2 feet high, and these were all
shaken down quite flat. The school building, which was in sight, began to shake
at the first shock, and large slabs of plaster fell from the walls at once. A
few moments afterwards the whole building lay flat, the walls collapsed and the
corrugated iron roof lay mangled on the ground.
Remarkably, Oldham reported
that a pink cloud of plaster and dust was seen hanging over every house in
Shillong at the end of the shock. Oldham’s impression at the end of the shock
was that its duration was certainly under 1 minute, and that it had travelled
from south to north. Several other observers agreed with him in limiting the
first and great shock to 40 or 50 seconds. When subsequent tremors were
included, the shocks lasted for a full 2 minutes. The violence of the shock
could be imagined from the fact that the whole of the damage done was completed
in the first 10 or 15 seconds of the shock.
Before the earthquake, the
buildings of Shillong were of broadly three types, which corresponded to three
degrees of ruin:
Stone Buildings — Every bit of solid stone
work in the neighbourhood of Shillong, including most of the bridges, were
absolutely levelled to the ground. The stone houses, and conspicuously the
church (pre-cursor to the present All Saints Church),
were reduced to flat heaps of single loose stones, covered with mangled sheets
of corrugated iron - the remains of the roofs.
Oldham noted that the walls
did not show the slightest partiality in their direction of falling. The stones
had in every case been shaken loose, and had collapsed equally on both sides of
the line of the wall. Heaps of stones along the roads, broken for mending
purposes, which stood 1 foot high before the shock, were flattened to 3 or 4
inches in thickness.
Two tall monuments (the
Quinton and Willians[17] monuments) of excellent cut stone work, about 20 or 30 feet in height,
were in ruins, though in each case some feet of the masonry at the base still
retained an upright position — the individual stones were shaken from each
other. The ruins were scattered most impartially on all sides in a rough
circle. The pinnacle of the larger Quinton monument had been thrown down
bodily, and lay some feet from the centre of the stone work.
Ekra-built Buildings – These had a wooden frame
work, with walls of san grass covered
with plaster. About half the buildings of this description were ruined in the
same way as the stone buildings. All the large ekra buildings were utterly ruined inside, the chimneys in all
cases being of stone work, the whole of which had fallen with the plaster from
the walls, and in many cases the roofs also. Small outhouses and villages of ekra-work had in some cases escaped with
the loss of the plaster. Some of the new larger buildings would also have
escaped, but for the stone chimneys, which had in every case wrecked the house.
Plank Buildings — These were built on the ‘log
hut’ principle, a wooden frame work covered with planks, resting unattached on
the ground. The only buildings of this type were stables or outhouses. In every
case they had escaped unscathed, except where the supporting stone work had
been shaken away, when they had been slightly displaced. Apart from the
buildings in Shillong, Oldham noted that trees had not suffered much, only two
were brought down by the shock. In Shillong itself the roads and hillsides were
cracked in all directions.
Oldham also reported that
small banks of earth had been flattened everywhere, and the band of the artificial lake (Ward’s Lake) — a bank some 150 yards long and 30 or
40 feet high, made mostly of earth, gave way almost at once when the great
shock began. The centre half of it had been carried bodily away down the valley
below by the rush of water.
On the hills around Shillong,
there were four or five considerable landslips. Patches of hillside debris had
fallen from steep nala banks,
carrying trees and undergrowth with them, and marked patches of red soil on the
hill — the largest was about 300 feet in width and the same in height.
J. G. Morgan, the Assistant
Superintendent of Telegraphs, Shillong Sub-Division, in his official letter,
dated 12 July 1897, addressed to the Director General of Telegraphs provided
the following account. He reported that the hill that he was on at the time
simply felt as if it was being rapidly moved in a horizontal plane backwards
and forward. This motion was so violent that he was unable to stand, and had to
crawl on his hands and knees and hold on to a tree for support.
He also examined several stone structures, the Church, Telegraph Office,
Divisional Superintendent's and Sub-Divisional officer's offices, and found
they had simply collapsed, owing to the stones being shaken out of their
position, the debris remaining all round the site. The roof in all these cases
has simply fallen almost exactly over the place where the supporting walls
were. The Quinton Memorial, which was a stone spire, had collapsed, and the
stones it was built of were simply lying piled round the base.
Edward Gait was the Secretary to
Henry Cotton, and he noted the following:
“The focus of this earthquake was not far
removed from Shillong, and, in that neighbourhood, the movements of the earth
attained a magnitude and violence of which those who did not personally
experience them can form no conception: to stand was impossible; the surface of
the ground moved in waves like those of the sea; large trees were swayed
backwards and forwards, bending almost to the ground; and huge blocks of stone
were tossed up and down like peas on a drum”.
Oldham had also received a number of accounts which
indicated that there were a very marked undulation of the surface of the
ground. He reported stories of loose stones lying on the surface of the roads that
were tossed in the air "like peas on
a drum." This vertical movement was accompanied by a more marked
backward and forward movement of the ground, the sensation produced was more
like being "shaken like a rat by a
terrier."
At Shillong the exact time of the commencement of
the shock was given by J. C. Arbuthnott, Deputy Commissioner, as 5.11 pm or
5.12 pm. The Assistant
Superintendent of Telegraphs, Shillong Division, reckoned the shock ended at
5.16 pm and estimated the duration of the whole earthquake to be about 1.5
minutes.
At Tura, Oldham was informed that a hanging lamp was kept constantly
swinging for three or four days. Some idea of the frequency of the earthquakes
in Shillong could be gathered from the fact that a record kept on the night of
the 19 June 1897, seven days after the earthquake, showed an average of one
shock every 8 minutes.
A Telegraph employee stated
that there was no thunder or lightning on the evening of 12 June 1897[18]. But when he was at the office, trying to restore communication, in
handling the wires, the Telegraph Master, Signallers and himself experienced
many electric shocks, some of them of considerable severity. Nearly all these
shocks were sometimes preceded, but more often followed by, an earth tremor.
Owing to the testing instruments and indicators being buried under the office
ruins, he was unable to find the direction of these currents.
The same employee gave
evidence of the loudness of the sounds in the epicentral tract. He found that
the crash of houses, falling within thirty yards of him, was completely drowned
by the roar of the earthquake, and all the accounts from the epicentre and its
neighbourhood mentioned the loudness of the sounds heard at the time of, and
immediately after, the earthquake.
Oldham recorded that at
Shillong the gate pillar of the Ferndale Hotel was twisted. Both the gate
pillars of Beauchamp Lodge were twisted as well. He also informs us that the
gate pillars of Fenton’s Hotel on either side of the gateway were built of
cubical blocks of stone coping, facing the four cardinal points and these were
similar to the Inglisby gate pillars. At Ashley Hall, there were two pillars
built of rubble stone masonry, the longer sides of each facing north and south.
The pillars in Colonel Macgregor’s house were damage as well.
Oldham notes very matter of
factly, that the large bridge on the Gauhati Road about 1.5 miles from
Shillong, over the Umkra river, had suffered severely. The abutment on the
south-west side fell entirely, carrying the girders with it. The two piers and
the abutment on the north-east side, of more recent construction, remained
standing, though somewhat cracked. It appeared that the piers were recently
widened and that the vertical cracks near the lower sides of them occurred at
the junction of the newer and older masonry.
Numerous landslips had
occurred along the steep hill sides between Shillong and the crossing of the
Umiam river, 8 miles from the station. At the Bishop's Fall, about 2 miles from
Shillong, the precipitous cliff on the right of the fall, down which the path
was carried, slipped down entirely into the basin at the foot of the fall.
However, the crest of the fall was not affected. Some fine slips were seen on
the hillside facing the fall.
At the Khasia Bazar at Maokhar, just outside Shillong
on the Gauhati road, was a collection of the large monolilhs of quartzite set
up in former times by the Khasias as ancestral memorials. Several of these had
fallen and some of them were broken through at ground level or a foot or so
above it.
Major Philip Richard Thornhagh Gurdon was
the Deputy Commissioner of Eastern Bengal and Assam
Commission, and Superintendent of Ethnography in Assam. In 1906, Gurdon
noted that the District had always been subject to earthquakes, for example, in
1875 some damage was done to houses in Gauhati and Shillong[19]. But all previous
shocks were thrown into insignificance by the catastrophe of 12 June 1897. The
whole of Shillong was levelled to the ground, masonry houses collapsed, and
roads and bridges were destroyed all over the District. The total number of lives
lost was 916. Most of the causalities occurred in the cliff villages near
Cherrapunji, and were due to the falling of the hill sides, which carried
villages with them or buried them in their ruins.
Gurdon notes that prior to 1897 most of the
public offices and private houses were built of rough hewn masonry. The
earthquake of 12 June 1897 reduced
them to a heap of ruins in the space of a few seconds, wrecked the water
supply, and destroyed the embankment which dammed up the waters of the lake
near Government House. The shock occurred on Saturday afternoon, when nearly
everyone was out of doors, and only 2 Europeans and 27 natives were killed. Had
it taken place at night, there would have been few survivors. The station had since been rebuilt, but the use of brick and
stone had been assiduously avoided.
In 1910, John Hughes
Morris wrote that the year 1897 would be long remembered in the history of the
Welsh Mission as the year of the great earthquake[20]. He
remarked that of all the dark years through which the Welsh Mission had been
called to pass, this was undoubtedly the darkest. The first shock occurred
shortly after five o'clock on Saturday afternoon, 12 June 1897. In a few
seconds every building in Sylhet, Khasia
and Jaintia, was levelled to the
ground. The Government offices, mission premises, including the 16 mission
houses, the two hospitals (Cherra and
Jowai), thirty chapels, the Theological Institution, and a large number of
schools, many of which, in the principal villages, were handsome and substantial
buildings - the fruit of the sacrifices of the ‘home’ and native churches for
over half a century – were swept away at a single stroke.
He paints a grim
picture of the aftermath - whole villages were completely destroyed, large
portions being buried, with their inhabitants, under the terrible landslips
following the upheaval. All the missionaries were providentially saved, but the
number of deaths among the native population was appalling. The disaster
occurred at the height of the rainy season, the sufferings of the homeless
missionaries and locals were painfully intensified. Added to this, fevers and
epidemics (including cholera) following the shock and the exposure, made fearful
ravages among the terror-stricken people.
Emanuel Philemon informs us that two ladies
happened to be bicycling along the road in front of All Saints Church when the
edifice collapsed with a roar of falling masonry and corrugated iron sheets
amid clouds of dust[21]. One lady said to the other, "Dear me! that must be an earthquake."
They both jumped off their cycles in their interest to see what had fully
happened to the Church, and then for the first time they felt the shock, for
they could not stand and were shaken off their feet and fell on the road with
their bicycles. The Church was totally destroyed. The Church plate and
registers, being in the safe built into the vestry wall, were left undamaged
and also the big Bible which was found upon the lectern standing in its place,
almost unscratched[22].
On Sunday, 13 June 1897, the day after the
earthquake, short services were held in the Bandstand on the cricket ground
(present Garrison Ground) and the whole congregation spontaneously joined aloud
in the general thanksgiving.
The residents of Shillong took this terrible calamity with wonderful courage and resource
and took up their residence in their out houses and cooch houses with such furniture as they were able to get together
from the wreck of their houses, and set to building grass huts pending the
erection of new houses. Many of the residents had taken refuge in the open
shade on the cricket ground and in the Laban market-place, where the Pinemount
School play ground is situated now. The total population after 1897 was
estimated at 8,384 in the Shillong area.
Most importantly, immediately after the
widespread havoc of the earthquake, the people of Shillong changed the pattern
of building stone houses to wooden houses following the Japanese formula now
known as ‘Assam type’ houses. Shillong was soon rebuilt and took on a distinctive
architectural character after this event.
On 28 June 1897, May Sweet
wrote to her sister Mrs. Godfrey from Shillong:
“Today we’ve had very few
shocks and hope they are nearly over — but they are always worse at night. A
great many people are in the back sheds, and have two or three sharing a
mattress. Another awful thing was that the water supply ran out and there was a
fear of Cholera breaking out. Potatoes too were scarce as everything was buried
but they are being dug up by degree and they say that in a few weeks the road
will be made for fresh ones to be brought up—of course everything was an awful
price. The ponies are fed on 1 seer pack or turned out to grass. Pearl behaved
beautifully all the time. The only way they kept their feet was that they
galloped. I really am most comfortable now for have got bashas built and I
suppose we’ll have to live in them for months. Every day we dig a few more
things out of the bungalow also; it is very slow work. Still I have a good many
things that are presentable after being cleaned.
Everybody we passed looked dazed or almost wild,
looking for others and their children - I felt dreadful too, though I knew Jack
was out with the Ayah and a friend and his son. And then I've come up here to
see my house, “Yogedan” was on the ground, literally there is not a stone left
standing on another in the whole Station, one or two kutcha houses are half
standing but unsafe. Poor Mr McCabe, we heard how he was buried when riding
home but could not believe it. - Mr Rossenrode also and a little child carried
away when the lake burst.
Oh, to see the desolation of the place now and the
lakes, the whole of the water emptied out in a few seconds - To make matters
worse and it turned cruel - we had a pelting wet night. I believe some people
had an awful time - could get nothing to eat and got soaked at night. I was
very lucky I heard that Government house had one of the tents up so I went up
there and asked the Cottons to take me in. They were very kind so I got the
kiddies and we stayed there 2 nights. Also Mrs. Arbuthnot's children and Nurse.
Mrs Campbell, Mrs Horn, Mrs Hawthorne, Duncan, Nightingale and Burkes. We had
an awful squash. Very wet and hardly anything to eat (though we did not feel
inclined for it).
We all sat up all night and
rushed out for our lives at every shock. It was an awful experience and I never
want to go through anything like it again. Luckily Jack kept well all through
and I have been able to get milk for him. I don't know what we should have done
without Mrs. Horne. That first night and day she was splendid, fed us all and
provided blankets and her house, being Kutcha, was not quite down. She could
get something out otherwise we should have starved.
Mr. and Mrs. Cotton quite lost their heads, poor things. I fancy they have never roughed it in their lives before- It is dreadful, we have had continuous shocks ever since and yesterday (Saturday at 5.30 we had another very bad one which would have been quite enough to bring down any building) - the natives predicted one a week after. We also had two very bad ones last night and hardly anyone has got undressed at night. I think a lot about the first. I did last night and had my dressing on ready to fly into the open- it is terrible living for over a week in a continual state of fear. Some peoples nerves have entirely gone-mine are bad enough and I am not surprised at anyone getting heart disease.
Mr. and Mrs. Cotton quite lost their heads, poor things. I fancy they have never roughed it in their lives before- It is dreadful, we have had continuous shocks ever since and yesterday (Saturday at 5.30 we had another very bad one which would have been quite enough to bring down any building) - the natives predicted one a week after. We also had two very bad ones last night and hardly anyone has got undressed at night. I think a lot about the first. I did last night and had my dressing on ready to fly into the open- it is terrible living for over a week in a continual state of fear. Some peoples nerves have entirely gone-mine are bad enough and I am not surprised at anyone getting heart disease.
Today we've had very few shocks and hope they are
nearly over-but they are always worse at night. The only thing is, I and
several others can't sleep and it is wonderful how one can keep up with so
little. For a whole week I one night slept from 11.30 till 3.30 and early this
morning for an hour. I was thin before but now am only skin and bone! However
it is nearly over and I hope we all feel we might be only too thankful for our
lives.
The Kings and Mrs. McCabe and Mrs. Trotter are all
with us in a little camp here. Up to last night Mrs. McCabe, the Kiddies Ayah
and I were in the Buggy shed which was leaning right over but it had not gone
as it was built of wood, but is luxurious compared to others. A great many
people are in the back sheds and have two or three sharing a mattress. Another
awful thing was that the water supply ran out and there was a fear of Cholera
breaking out. Dr. Campbell quite thought one of my grass cutters had it. We
send to the polo ground for water.
Potatoes too were scarce as everything was buried
but they are being dug up by degree and they say that in a few weeks the road
will be made for fresh ones to be brought up - of course everything was an
awful price. The ponies are fed on 1 seer pack or turned out to grass. Pearl
behaved beautifully all the time. The only way they kept their feet was that
they galloped. I really am most comfortable now for have got bashas built and I
suppose we'll have to live in them for months. Every day we dig a few more
things out of the bungalow also it is very slow work. Still I have a good many
things that are presentable after being cleaned.
Mr. Gordon and Mr. McClean (brother of Norman's
fiancee - ex Gauhati) in their escape were both having their bath and ran on
the road absolutely naked, someone gave one a coat and the other some native
cloth (there has just been another shock. I wonder when they will cease or if
all our hair will be grey by then!). It was in an awful way as you can imagine
as to whether Dibrugarh had gone or not. I could not hear for days and not a
wire as all communication was destroyed. Thank goodness it is alright-tho'
Willie says they had a severe earthquake. He could not stand alone but no
damage was done in Dibru itself.
It's plenty round about Cherra, it seems to have
been worse than this. Whole sides of mountains have absolutely disappeared. Mr.
Cotton has telegraphed Willie to come up. I'm afraid everything you had here
has now gone completely and that lovely sideboard in Gauhati - and in getting
to write to you he is afraid there is no chance of the piano being dug out
whole. I don't know when they will talk of building things up again. Everyone
will live for months at least in bashas. Till then I shall manage to keep
cheerful somehow and I shall not mind anything else as long as Jack [her son] keeps well.
Goodbye, I never thought that first night I should
see any of you again. I think everyone expected the ground to open and swallow
us all. Willie [her
husband] spent Sunday the 26th at Shillong-going back to work on Monday-
walking 10 miles a day”.
LaTouche had arrived in Shillong late on 12 July
1897. LaTouche left from Gauhati at
about 6 a.m. the same day and rode up to the half-way place, Mungpo [Nongpo],
where he had breakfast. His servant, Korba, came in the tonga with his
bedding and some clothes caught up with him at Mungpo, so he changed at once
and took his place in the tonga leaving Korba to bring on the bicycle.
LaTouche had arrived in Shillong two weeks after May
Sweet's letter had been written, and as indicated in her letter there were no
houses standing. People were living in the sheds where horses were normally kept.
LaTouche stayed in a tent in Colonel Maxwell's grounds, west of the Cricket field
in Shillong. This was about a kilometre west of the Public Works Department,
where he eventually devised and operated a seismoscope.
On 13 July 1897, LaTouche reported from Shillong that
the walls and chimneys of all the houses were simply shapeless heaps of
stone. He was staying with a Col. Maxwell, living in a small tent while Col.
Maxwell was in one of his servant’s houses. His bungalow had not fallen as it
was built of lathe and plaster, but the chimney came down and wrecked the whole
of the inside. The whole house was leaning to one side and la Touche liked it
to a house in a nightmare.
On 14 July 1897, LaTouche reported from Shillong
that this side of Mungpo [Nongpo] there had been a great many landslips
especially in the last 8 miles but they had all been cleared sufficiently to
allow carts to pass. The last big bridge on the road about 3 miles from Shillong
was entirely gone. He had gone to see Mr. Cotton, and expressed his views on
the earthquake. Cotton had been reading the reports of the Cachar earthquake of
1869 and was full of technical terms.
LaTouché
felt it was most extraordinary that so few people were killed in Shillong, for
by all accounts the houses came down with a roar almost at the beginning of the
shock. There were quite a few narrow escapes as well. Colonel Maxwell was hit
by a stone from a falling chimney. He also recounted to LaTouche the story of
four children who were having a tea party who were saved by their nurses
picking them up and rushing out, just as the chimney fell smash on the table
they were sitting at.
On 15 July 1897, LaTouche reported from Shillong
that the same morning there were two very respectable shocks, but people took very
little notice of them now, only everyone objected to sleep under anything like
a roof. According to him, everything in Shillong that could possibly come down,
had already fallen by then.
LaTouche also
described the activities of the telegraph officers in Shillong in his official
report. Since the first shock occurred the signallers had amused themselves by
telegraphing a certain signal [meaning an agreed ‘alert’ code] to Gauhati or
Sylhet whenever they happened to be at the instrument and felt a shock, at the
same time receiving a signal from either of those places if the shock was felt
there. The Telegraph Master assured LaTouche that in all cases the shocks were
felt absolutely simultaneously at these places.
At 3:30 pm on 14 July
1897, LaTouche reported that the last big bridge on the road about 3 miles from
Shillong had entirely gone, so the road has to go round about 4 miles to get
across the temporary bridge higher up the river. On 14 July 1897 Colonel
Maxwell and LaTouche walked round to take a general look at the damage, and
then went to breakfast at the Gaits’ (Edward Gaits was the Secretary to the Government and wrote an official report
about the earthquake a month after LaTouche's visit]. They were living in a little kutcha built cottage in their
compound which had stood up very well.
Henry Cotton gave LaTouche
a graphic account of his escape. Most people were then building small temporary
shelters to live in till the end of the rains, and some were making themselves
comfortable in tents and were
having the floors boarded.
When LaTouche arrived, they
were all talking of removing Shillong 1,000 feet higher up the hill where it
ought to have been built at first. LaTouche was of the view that if they did
that, in another 20 years or so, it would be a really fine hill station. A
great many of monuments in the cemetery had been thrown down or shifted. The Public
Works Department were going to make repairs as soon as things had settled down
a bit.
Mr Arbuthnott strongly
recommended that the opportunity should be taken to erect the new station “on the extensive plateau which commence at
the 5th mile on the Cherrapunji road”, 1,000 feet above the old site. But
this was not, no doubt for good reasons, accepted, and the work of
reconstructions proceeded on the old site.
On 16 July 1897, LaTouche was rigging up
a seismometer and had to visit Golam Hyders's shop [Golam Hyder was a wealthy merchant who had
settled in Shillong]. Several babus
accosted LaTouche when he was out that morning and wanted to know if the place
was safer or whether it would disappear one fine day. He always told them that it
was as safe as any other place. The continued shocks kept the babus in a
state of panic.
On 17 July 1897, LaTouche
noted that a game of cricket was to be played, although
LaTouche did not think he should go as he knew so few people in Shillong by
then. Col. Maxwell generally played but on that day he was very busy and could
not attend. He imagined Mr. Cotton would stop all games, as far as he could,
for a month after the earthquake, at least he would not allow any of the civil
officers to play.
On 24 July 1897, the
usual Saturday cricket match was going on just below the house
all afternoon, but LaTouche could not see the field because of the trees. The
Ghurka pipers were playing a Scotch reel. They and the band took it in turns to
play. As soon as the band stopped the pipers struck up and according to LaTouche,
they played very well too.
On 25 July 1897, there had been a heavy
shower of rain in the afternoon, and LaTouche expected those people who went up
to the Shillong Peak to have a picnic must have got wet. Col. Maxwell and LaTouche
had a walk before breakfast up to the military water works about 2 miles from the
station. It was very pleasant walking through the pine woods, with the pine
needles underfoot. There was a fairly strong earthquake shock at about 6 p.m. The
Khaisas said that there would to be a big shock at 5 p.m. but it did not come
off. LaTouche wondered where they got these ideas, and wondered if there were
traditions of former shocks.
LaTouche’s last day in
Shillong was on 27 July 1897. Apparently LaTouche was delayed
in Shillong and this tried his patience a good deal. As could be expected, things
were so much at “sixes and sevens” that it was difficult to get anything
done at all. The Executive Engineer was pulled every way by difficult people
each wanting him to do something in the way of building or repairing for them,
and as he was a kind hearted man who could not say no to anyone, he had had his
hands full.
On 26 July 1897, LaTouche
had a long talk with Cotton about the earthquake, and told him his views about
the cause of it. According to LaTouche, Cotton had made himself rather
unpopular in Shillong in the way he behaved after the earthquake, as he seemed
to have lost his head in a way, and sent out all sorts of exaggerated reports
to the Government of India before trying to find out whether they were true or
not. However, LaTouche found him very genial and pleasant to talk to.
27th July Maoflong. First of
all the coolies Korba brought said the road was so bad out this way that they
could not get along it, but I knew better and in fact I was able to ride most
of the way, and except for a mile or so where it is being re-metalled it was
very good.
After breakfast
I went to the PWD office and set up the seismograph, The hut was barely
finished and indeed, while I was setting it up, the Chinaman who built it was
putting on the door. As now it was up and I had explained the working of it to
the people who will have charge of it, I started for Maoflong. Coming out of
Shillong in this direction there is a long climb of 5 miles, but I was able to
ride most of it. Then the road keeps along the tops of the hills and is a good
deal up and down but I only had to walk about a mile altogether and got here at
about 5:30, had some tea and changed, and went over to see the missionaries
(Welsh) who live here.
The dak bungalow is wrecked, of course, only the roof
standing, but a grass hut has been built and the khamsamah, a Khasia who
remembers my coming here before, gave me a very good dinner, & produced a
bottle of beer so I am well off. The missionaries are living in a small house
belonging to one of their converts. They were full of their experience of the
shock of course. I don't think there is very much here for me to see, but I
shall have a look round in the morning and then go on to Cherra. I was lucky
today in getting no rain, but there is almost certain to be some tomorrow
between this and Cherra.
In his report (Oldham, 1899) LaTouche
makes the following observation near Maophlang about co-seismic deformation of
the plateau: Mr. Evans, the Missionary
at Maophlang, informed me that soon after the earthquake his attention was
called by one of his converts, a Khasia, to the aspect of the hill to the west
of the village. These hills are separated from that in which Maophlang stands
by a deep valley, through which one of the tributaries of the Bogapani runs. It
appeared to them that beyond the hill, on the west side of this valley they
could see more of the distant hills than before, and they came to the
conclusion that, the intermediate hills had subsided. The furthest peaks they
can see from Maophlang are some four or five miles distant. Of course an
elevation of the more distant bills or of that on which they were standing
would produce the same apparent effect as subsidence of the intermediate hills.
28th Cherrapunji: The road between Maophlang and this was very bad in places. In fact I
had to carry my bicycle part of the way. On the worst part a good Khaisia
volunteered to carry it for me a good deal. It rained off and on most of the
time, and since I got here it rained a good deal. Now it is pouring. The dak
bungalow is not finished yet so I have to put up in a tent. Luckily there is no
wind, but the sand flies are awful. I am going to bed to escape them
29th 10am Now it is
pouring again. It is really aggravating as I want to go out and see what is to
be seen and take some photos, but it is hopeless in this weather. I sent a
telegram last night, or rather, wrote one out, to the commissioner of Sylhet
asking him to send me some boats to take me down from the foot of the hills to
the steamer, but it is still lying at the Telegraph Office as the line has
broken down somewhere so that will mean some delay. Korba has just come in from
Shillong. I had to leave him there as he could not get a cooly to carry his
box.
30th July 1897 Cherrapunji. It cleared up nicely after breakfast yesterday and I was able to go
out and do some work. I found several interesting things in the way of gate
pillars overturned etc. Of course, every building of stone is flat on the
ground and the place looks quite different from what it used to do, now that
the ruins of the houses that were built here long ago, when it was a sanatarium
have dissappeared. While I was at tea Mr. Arbuthnot, the Depy. Commr walked in.
He had come by another road from Shillong so I missed him when he came out on
Wednesday. He is going about to the different villages to find out how many
people have been killed. The first accounts were very much exagerrated, and it
is doubtful whether more than 500 or 600 were killed in the whole of the hills.
Most of them were killed out of doors by landslips.
In Cherra the people who
stayed in their houses were all right as the walls are very low, and the roof
held together, but those who ran out were killed by the high walls they had
built along the village streets falling on them. After tea I went up to see the
missionaries, one of whom, Dr. Griffiths I used to know very well in the old
days. He was very glad to see me & I sat and talked, about the earthquake
of course, for over an hour. He says that what the Khaisias feel most is that
the stone boxes in which the ashes of the dead are kept have been shaken to
pieces. They consider it a great disgrace that the ashes should be exposed to
view. The cemetery (English) here is in a woeful state. Most of the tombs have
fallen over and sunk down into the ground, which has all become a loose sand.
LaTouche's description of the damaged
monument to David Scott at Cherrapunji in Oldham [1899] reads: "The monument erected by the Supreme
Government to the memory of David Scott is a very massive structure, built of
large squared blocks of sandstone bound to each other with iron clamps. The
upper portion of the obelisk has fallen, mainly towards the S.S.W., but some
portion has also fallen towards N.N.E. One of the loosened stones is still
lying on the top, overhanging the southern side by about 1/2 of its length
(Figure 23). The whole monument above
the two steps at the base has moved bodily towards SW. The stones of the lowest
course of the pedestal have been shaken apart from each other, the one on the
west side having been jerked out to the edge of the step below."
[Oldham, 1899 p. 272].
There are no records of the
buildings before the earthquake of 1897. There is, however, extant a photograph
which shows the front of the old house as it was before it was destroyed in
1897. It must have been a building without any architectural qualities and Mr.
Arundell (Executive Engineer, Assam Bengal Railway), who designed the new
house, describes it as a “building which
had been added to from time to time upon no preconceived plan and was in many
ways inconveniently and wastefully arranged”.
It was a stone building like
most of the other houses in Shillong at that time and had a corrugated iron
roof. The accommodation was probably very meagre judging from the sketch plan
for the new house which was drawn up after the earthquake and which followed
pretty closely the old ground plan.
Then came the
great earthquake of June 12, 1897, when Government House and practically every
other building in Shillong was laid flat. Probably the best accounts about this
disaster are to be found in the official report to the Government or India
No.5409-G., dated the 14th August 1897, and especially the report from the
Deputy Commissioner which is enclosed, No.1736, dated the 29th July 1897.
For Government House the
sketch plan drawn up by Mr Arundell was approved on 31 May 1898. Mr Arundell
worked on and improved a plan drawn up by the Public Works Department based or
the plan of the old house, and, and he says in one of his letters, “the general disposition of the rooms and the
dimensions of the principal ones is identical ones in both plans”.
Similar extinguisher-like
spires but of larger dimensions still surmount the bays in the study and the
drawing room, a common architectural feature in Shillong houses. The new building instead of being of masonry was of the
“earthquake-proof” pattern composed of timber frames with “ekra” covered with
plaster in between, while the roof was made of teak shingles, an improvement on
the old corrugated iron roof.
After the
earthquake of 1897 rebuilding operations commenced and the houses were
reconstructed between 1899 and 1903. Immediately after the earthquake temporary
quarters were constructed for the Chief Commissioner out of the ruins of
Government House by Mr. F. Hodgkins who was then probably acting as Executive
Engineer. While they were under construction the Chief Commissioner and his
household lived in tents.
[1]A History of Assam, Edward
Albert Gait, Thacker, Spink & Co., Calcutta, 1906. University of
California.Pg.373-374.
[2]Sir Henry
John Stedman Cotton, (13 September 1845 – 22 October 1915) was a British
Liberal Party politician. He was Member of Parliament for Nottingham East from
1906 to January 1910. Cotton joined the Indian Civil Service, rising eventually
to be Chief Commissioner of Assam. Cotton College, Guwahati was established by
him in 1901. Cotton supported Indian Home Rule and served as President of
Indian National Congress in 1904, being one of the few Englishmen to do so. As
such, he led the opposition to Curzon's invasion of Tibet and partition of
Bengal. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_John_Stedman_Cotton.
[3]Indian &
home memories by Sir Henry Cotton (1910), T.F.Unwin, London. University of
Toronto. http://www.archive.org/details/indianhomememori00cottuoft
[4]Electronic Supplement to Tom
LaTouche and the Great Assam Earthquake of 12 June 1897: Letters from the
Epicenter by Roger Bilham, University of Colorado at Boulder. Page 1 of 11. Sweet, M. Papers. (Mrs. May Sweet)
Given by The Revd. J.P.M. Sweet, grandson of May Sweet. Shillong, Assam: 1897.
Xeroxed copy of a letter from May Sweet to her sister Mrs. Godfrey dated 28th
June 1897 from Shillong. 7pp. (Small collections, Box 22) Center of South Asian
Studies, Cambridge University.
[5]Assam district gazetteers,
Volume 10, B.C. Allen, Baptist Mission Press, 1906, Harvard University. http://www.archive.org/stream/assamdistrictga00allegoog#page/n48/mode/1up.
[7]Indian & home memories by
Sir Henry Cotton (1910), T.F.Unwin, London. University of Toronto.
http://www.archive.org/details/indianhomememori00cottuoft.
[8]Recent Earthquakes in India,
Colonist, RÅrahi XLI, Putanga 9181, 26 Haratua 1898, Page 4. National Library
of New Zealand. http://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/cgi-bin/paperspast?a=d&d=TC18980526.2.18&l=mi&e=-------10--1----2--
[9]Electronic Supplement to Tom
LaTouche and the Great Assam Earthquake of 12 June 1897: Letters from the
Epicenter by Roger Bilham, University of Colorado at Boulder. Page 1 of 11. Sweet, M. Papers. (Mrs. May Sweet) Given by The
Revd. J.P.M. Sweet, grandson of May Sweet. Shillong, Assam: 1897. Xeroxed copy
of a letter from May Sweet to her sister Mrs. Godfrey dated 28th June 1897 from
Shillong. 7pp. (Small collections, Box 22) Center of South Asian Studies,
Cambridge University.
[10]In the vicinity of the Khasi
village, often just below the brow of the hill to the leeward side, are to be
seen dark woods of oak and other trees. These are the sacred groves. Here the
villagers worship U ryngkew U basa, the tutelary deity of the village. These
groves are taboo, and it is an offence to cut trees therein for any purpose
other than for performing funeral obsequies.
[12] Thomas
Henry Digges LaTouche and the Great
Assam Earthquake of 12 June 1897: Letters from the Epicenter, Roger Bilham,
University of Colorado at Boulder.
[13]It would appear that Richard
Girvin Sisson was born in 1853 in London, was a tea planter, and was married to
Fanny Solomons in London on 4 September 1893. He died in Surrey on 2 March 1921
from pneumonia. http://www.montyoscar.homelinux.com/f7900.php.
[14]Report on the Great Earthquake
of 12th June 1897, by Richard Dixon Oldham, Superintendent,
Geological Survey of India, 1899. Memoirs of the Geological Survey of India,
Vol. XXIX, Branner Geological Library, Stanford University Library.
[17]The obelisk was erected 4 July 1886 in memory of T.
J. Willans a former Executive Engineer for the district, Tom LaTouche.
[18]Mr. J. G. Morgan, Assistant
Superintendent of Telegraphs, Shillong Sub-Division, in a letter to the
Director General of Telegraphs, dated l2 July 1898.
[20]The History
of the Welsh Calvinistic Methodists’ Foreign Mission to the end of the year
1904, John Hughes Morris, 1910.
[21]Philemon, E.
P. 1995, Cherrapunjee : the
arena of rain : a history and guide to Sohra & Shillong / E.P. Philemon
Spectrum Publications, Guwahati.
