greatly,
ranging from total demolition down to the loss of chimney tops and the
dislodgment of more or less plastering. The number of buildings which
were completely demolished and levelled to the ground was not great; but
there were several hundreds which lost a large portion of their
walls. There were very many also which remained standing, but so badly
shattered that public safety required that they should be pulled down
altogether. There was not, so far as at present is known, a brick or
stone building which was not more or less cracked, and in most of them
the cracks were a permanent disfigurement and a source of danger
and inconvenience." In some places the railway track was curiously
distorted. "It was often displaced laterally, and sometimes alternately
depressed and elevated. Occasionally several lateral flexures of double
curvature and of great amount were exhibited. Many hundred yards of
track had been shoved bodily to the south eastward."

The ground was fissured at some places in the city to a depth of many
feet, and numerous "craterlets" were formed, from which sand was ejected
in considerable quantities. These are not uncommon phenomena, and were
due, no doubt, to the squirting of water out of saturated sandy layers
not far below the surface; these being squeezed between two less
pervious beds in the passage of the earthquake wave. The ejected
material in the Charleston earthquake was ordinary sand, such as
might exist in many districts which had been quite undisturbed by any
concussions of the earth.

Captain Dutton made a careful study of the observations collected
by himself and others concerning this earthquake, and came to the
conclusion that the Charleston wave traveled with unusual speed, for
its mean velocity was about 17,000 feet a second. The focus of the
disturbance was also ascertained. Apparently it was a double one, the
two centres being about thirteen miles apart, and the line joining
them running nearly the same distance to the west of Charleston. The
approximate depth of the principal focus is given as twelve miles,
with a possible error of less than two miles; that of the minor one as
roughly eight miles.

The Charleston earthquake was felt as a tremor of more or less force
through a wide area, embracing 900,000 square miles, and affecting
nearly the whole country east of the Mississippi. It is said that the
yield of the Pennsylvania natural gas wells decreased, and that a geyser
in