Between the selfish rush for safety here described and the calm
interest of the most distant observers, Major Dutton records nearly
every possible variety of mental effects, the actions resulting from
which may be roughly classified as follows:
A. No persons leave their rooms.
B. Some persons leave their houses.
C. Most persons run into the streets, which are full of excited
people.
D. People rush wildly for open spaces and remain all night
out-of-doors.
In the map of the isoseismal lines (Fig. 25), the dotted curves bound
the areas in which the effects corresponding to the three highest
degrees of the above scale were observed. The curve for the first
degree (A) coincides of course with the isoseismal line of intensity
2.
It will be seen that there is a certain rough correspondence between
these curves and the isoseismal lines. The curve D and the isoseismal
8 are close together; in other words, people thought it wiser to camp
out-of-doors for the night if the shock was strong enough to damage
buildings slightly. The curve C and the isoseismal 6 are similarly
connected; that is, if the movement made pictures swing, etc., people
rushed into the streets. On the whole, the curve B and the isoseismal
3 roughly coincide, or, if the shock was not strong enough to make
doors and windows rattle, some persons left their houses and public
meetings were dispersed.
_Feeling of Nausea._--A feeling of nausea was experienced by many
persons at the time of the earthquake, somewhat rarely it appears in
the neighbourhood of the epicentre and even outside the isoseismal 7,
but more frequently beyond these limits, and perceptible as far as the
broken line in Fig. 25. The most distant places at which it was
noticed are Blue Mountain Creek (New York) and Dubuque (Iowa), which
are respectively 823 and 886 miles from Charleston.
AFTER-SHOCKS.
As Summerville lies six miles to the north-west of the Woodstock
epicentre and Charleston 16 miles to the south-east, it is probable
that many of the after-shocks were unfelt and a still greater number
unrecorded. In Charleston, seven shocks, all much slighter than the
principal shock, were felt during the night of August 31--September 1,
and thirty before the end of September. Of these, the shock of
September 3rd, at 11 P.M., was the strongest, but those which occurred
on September 1st, 2nd, 21st, and 27th were also described as severe,
and the remainder as moderate or slight. For weeks after the great
shock, curious sensations were distinctly perceptible during the still
hours of the night "as though the crust of the earth were resting on a
gelatinous mass in constant motion." The last shock felt in Charleston
seems to have been one recorded on March 18th, 1887.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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