Account of' Earthquakes on the Mississippi. 311 



doubt, that water is adequate to the production of any of those 

 effects, which are generally ascribed to the deluge. 



2. Account of Earthquakes on the Mississippi. 



From all the accounts, corrected one by another, and com- 

 pared with the very imperfect narratives that were pubhshed, 

 I infer, that the shock of these earthquakes, in the immediate 

 vicinity of the centreof their course, must have equalled in their 

 terrible heavings of the earth, any thing of the kind that has been 

 recorded. I do not believe that the public have ever yet had 

 any adequate idea of the violence of the concussions. We are 

 accustomed to measure this, by the buildings overturned, and 

 the mortality that results. Here the country was thinly set- 

 tled. The houses fortunately were frail and of logs, the most 

 difficult to overturn that could be constructed. Yet as it was, 

 whole tracts were plunged into the bed of the river. The 

 grave-yard at new Madrid, with all its sleeping tenants, was 

 precipitated into the bend of the stream. Most of the houses 

 were thrown down. Large lakes of twenty miles in extent 

 were made in an hour ; other lakes were drained. The whole 

 country to the mouth of the Ohio in one direction, and to the St 

 Francis in the other, including a front of three hundred miles, 

 was convulsed to such a degree as to create lakes and islands, 

 the number of which is not yet known, — to cover a tract of 

 many miles in extent near the Little Prairie, with water three 

 or four feet deep ; and when the water'disappeared, a stratum 

 of sand of the same thickness was left in its place. The trees 

 split in the midst, lashed one with another, and are still visible 

 over great tracts of country, inclining in every direction, and 

 at every angle to the earth and to the horizon. 



They described the undulations of the earth as resembling 

 waves, increasing in elevation as they advanced, and when 

 they had attained a certain fearful height, the earth would 

 burst, and vast volumes of water and sand and pit-coal were 

 discharged, as high as the tops of the trees. I have seen a 

 hundred of these chasms which remained fearfully deep, al- 

 though in a very tender alluvial soil, and after a lapse of 

 seven years. Whole districts were covered with white sand, 

 so as to become uninhabitable. 



