280 AUDUBON, THE NATURALIST 



furrows, like the ruffled waters of a lake." For 

 "November" he should have written "January" of the 

 year 1812. 8 



This series of memorable earthquakes was followed 

 in 1813 by a hurricane, more terrific than destructive, 

 which swept the lower part of Henderson County, Ken- 

 tucky, and cut a wide swath through the virgin forests, 

 without causing any loss of life. Audubon's account 

 of this event 9 is that of a close observer who escaped 

 destruction by a hair's breadth and who related only 

 what he himself had experienced. Critics inclined to be 

 supercilious have complained that he exaggerated the 

 importance of a merely local event and stretched the 

 course of the storm some 800 miles until it had covered 

 several states. "Sir," said Waterton, in pointing a dart 

 through Audubon to another target, "this is really too 

 much even for us Englishmen to swallow, whose gullets 

 are known to be the largest, the widest, and the most 

 elastic, of any in the world." What Audubon said was: 

 "I have crossed the path of this storm, at a distance of 

 a hundred miles from the spot where I witnessed its 

 fury, and, again four hundred miles farther off, in the 

 State of Ohio. Lastly, I observed traces of its ravages 

 on the summits of the mountains connected with the 



8 These historic earthquakes, which were most destructive of life and 

 property in the lower Mississippi Valley, began on December 16, 1811, 

 and therefore before Audubon and Nolte had reached the western country. 

 They were noted for their remarkable frequency and persistence, 221 

 shocks having been recorded in a single week at Henderson, Audubon's 

 home at that time; though their force was mostly spent after the first 

 three months, they did not wholly die away in the Ohio Valley until 

 December 12, 1813, when the last feeble vibration was recorded by Dr. 

 Daniel Drake at Cincinnati; the worst shocks at this point were experi- 

 enced on December 16, 1811, on January 23 and February 7, 1812. See 

 Daniel Drake, Natural and Statistical View of Cincinnati, and the Miami 

 Valley; with an appendix, containing observations on the late Earth- 

 quakes, (Cincinnati, 1815); and Edmund L. Starling, History of Hender- 

 son County, Kentucky (Bibl. No. 186). 



9 "The Hurricane," Ornithological Biography, vol. i, p. 262. 



