The land-area disturbed by the earthquake and the isoseismal lines are shown in Fig. 25, the small black oval area (which Includes Charleston) being that within which the greatest damage to buildings occurred. The chief part of the epicentre, however, lies from 12 to 15 miles to the west and north-west of Charleston, in a forest-clad district, containing only two villages and various scattered houses. The city of Charleston, whose population between 1880 and 1891 increased from fifty to fifty-five thousand, is built on a peninsula between the Cooper River on the east and the Ashley River on the south-west. Originally, this was an irregular tract of comparatively high and dry land, intersected by numerous creeks, which, as the city grew, were filled up to the general level of the higher ground. It is on this "made land" as a rule that the more serious damage to buildings occurred. At 9.51 P.M. (standard time of the 75th meridian), the great earthquake occurred, and, one minute later, there was left hardly a building in the city that was not injured more or less seriously. "The destruction," as Major Dutton remarks, "was not of that sweeping and unmitigated order which has befallen other cities, and in which every structure built of material other than wood has been levelled completely to the earth in a chaos of broken rubble, beams, tiles, and planking, or left in a condition practically no better." The number of houses entirely demolished was not great, but several hundred lost a large part of their walls, and many were condemned as unsafe and afterwards pulled down. A board of inspectors, appointed to investigate the condition of the houses, reported that not one hundred out of fourteen thousand chimneys examined by them escaped damage, and that 95 per cent. of those injured were broken off at the roof. The total cost of the necessary repairs, it was estimated, would amount to about one million pounds. According to the official records, 27 persons were killed in Charleston during the earthquake, but, by cold, exposure, etc., this number was brought up to not less than 83. The number of persons wounded was never ascertained. ISOSEISMAL LINES AND DISTURBED AREA.