OUR GREATEST EARTHQUAKES 77 



cracks to open where the surface was bent and the swells hurst. Giants 

 of the forest were split for forty feet up the stump, half standing on 

 one side of the fissure and the remainder on the other. In one instance 

 ;i crack opened in a cellar, swallowing a large number of castings just 

 received from Pittsburg and temporarily stored away there. 



Some of the earthquake rents were of great size, having widths of 

 thirty feet or more, while some are reported as many as five miles 

 in length. Others were circular in form, making basin-like de- 

 pressions up to several hundred feet in diameter. Into some of 

 these cracks rushed the waters from swamps and bayous, while else- 

 where small streams or even rivers left their old beds and made 

 new channels through the cracks. In one instance, a settler living 

 on a neck of land lying within a great bend or ox-bow started at 

 daybreak the morning after the quake to go to his well which the 

 night before had been in his yard. But no well was there ! Instead 

 the river was at his door. Glancing across the water, however, the well 

 could be seen on the further side. During the night a crack had been 

 formed between the house and the w T ell and had been taken possession 

 of by the waters, leaving both unharmed though on opposite sides of 

 the stream. 



Accompanying the cracking in many instances there seemed, accord- 

 ing to one observer, " a blowing out of the earth, bringing up coal, 

 wood, sand, etc., accompanied with a roaring and whistling produced by 

 the impetuosity of the air escaping from the confinement . . . trees 

 being blown up, cracked and split, and falling by thousands at a time. 

 The surface settled and a black liquid rose to the belly of the horses." 

 The atmosphere was saturated with ' sulphurous vapor,' due to the 

 gases escaping from the decaying vegetation and coaly matter (lignite) 

 deep below the surface in the deposits of the prehistoric Mississippi. 

 These gases tainted the air for miles and so affected the streams and 

 rivers that the waters, even to a distance of one hundred and fifty miles 

 below, could not be used for several days. The intense darkness caused 

 by these vapors in the night, and the murky purplish tinge imparted to 

 the atmosphere by day, produced a vivid and never to be forgotten im- 

 pression on every one who passed through the experience. 



It was along the Mississippi that the destruction reached a maxi- 

 mum. A traveler on a flatboat, tied up to the bank about forty miles 

 below Xew Madrid, speaking of the first shock, says that the men, 

 wakened by the quake, sprang to the deck thinking the Indians had 

 made an attack. After daylight, as they were preparing to depart, 

 " a loud roaring was heard, sounding like steam escaping from a boiler. 

 This was accompanied by a violent agitation of the shores and tre- 

 mendous boiling up of the waters in huge swells which tossed the 

 boats so violently that the men with difficulty could keep upon their 

 feet. The sandbars and points of islands gave way, swallowed up in 



