_Displacements of Alluvium._--Many other remarkable evidences of compression were observed. Telegraph posts, originally set up in a straight line, were displaced, occasionally as much as ten or fifteen feet; sometimes without any apparent connection with neighbouring river-channels. In one part of the Assam-Bengal Railway, for nearly half a mile, the whole embankment, including borrow-pits and trees on either side, was shifted laterally without any sign of wrenching from the adjoining ground, the maximum distance amounting to 6-3/4 feet. As the displacement took place parallel to the only river-course in the neighbourhood, Mr. Oldham attributes it to the sliding of the surface-layers over some yielding bed beneath. Again, throughout large areas of Northern Bengal, Lower Assam, and Maimansingh, rice-fields, which had been carefully levelled so that they might be uniformly flooded, were thrown into gentle undulations, the crests of which were occasionally two or three feet above the hollows. The piers of bridges were also moved parallel to, as well as towards, the streams, showing that the displacements extended to the depth of the foundations. The buckling of railway lines was often violent and took place over a large area. In the Charleston earthquake, every such bend was accompanied by a corresponding extension elsewhere (p. 113); but, in the Baluchistan earthquake of 1892, the neighbouring fish-joints were jammed up tight.[73] In the one case, there was merely local compression; in the other, a permanent displacement of the earth's crust. The distortion of the Indian lines seems to belong to the former class. Repairs were of course generally made without delay; but all the information that could be obtained on this point showed that the compression causing the crumpling of the lines was accompanied by a compensating expansion, generally at a distance of about 300 yards. _Sand-Vents._--Shortly after the earthquake, large quantities of water and sand issued from fissures in the ground. At Dhubri, "innumerable jets of water, like fountains playing, spouted up to heights varying from 18 inches to quite 3-1/2 or 4 feet. Wherever this had occurred, the land was afterwards seen to occupy a sandy circle with a depression in its centre. These circles ranged from 2 to 6 and 8 feet in diameter, and were to be seen all over the country. In some places, several were quite close together; in others they were at a distance of several yards." Near Maimansingh, they seem to have been almost as numerous, fifty-two, of four feet and less in diameter, being counted within an area 100 yards long and about 20 feet wide.