METEOROLOGY. 423 



Philadelphia. It was about one hundred and fifty miles southwest of 

 the swamps, and the people heard the first shocks on the 16th of De- 

 cember, and at the same time as the citizens of New Madrid, but the 

 sounds and shocks came from the northeast,* 



I will briefly notice some of the phenomena connected with these 

 earthquakes, the state of the weatber at the time, and the opinions 

 which the people held in regard to their origin, or the great cause of 

 them. 



The weather was warm and smoky, and had been so for some days, 

 not a breath of air stirring, and so thick and smoky that the Kentucky 

 shore, one mile distant, could not be seen at all. They were in a 

 balmy Indian summer. The morning after the first shock, as some 

 men were crossing the Mississippi, they saw a black substance floating 

 on the river, in strips four or five rods in breadth by twelve or four- 

 teen rods in length_, resembling soot from some immense chimney, or 

 the cinders from some gigantic stove-pipe. It was so thick that the 

 water could not be seen under it. On the Kentucky side of the river 

 there empties into the Mississippi river two small streams, one 

 called the Obine, the other the Forked Deer. Lieutenant Robinson, 

 a recruiting ofiicer in the United States army, visited that part of 

 Kentucky lying between those two rivers in 1812, and states that he 

 found numberless little mounds thrown up in the earth, and where a 

 stick or a broken limb of a tree lay across these mounds they were all 

 burnt in two pieces, which went to prove to the people that these com- 

 motions were caused by some internal action of fire. 



In the Mississippi river, about five miles above what was then called 

 the first Chickasaw Bluffs, but in later times Plum Point, was an island 

 about three miles long, covered with a heavy growth of timber, which 

 sank in one of these shocks to the tops of the trees, which made the 

 navigation extremely dangerous in a low stage of the river. 



About four miles above Paducah, on the Ohio river, on the Illinois 

 side, on a post-oak flat, a large circular basin was formed, more than 

 one hundred feet in diameter, by the sinking of the earth, how deep 

 no one can tell, as the tall stately post-oaks sank below the tops of 

 the tallest trees. The sink filled with water, and continues so to this 

 time. 



The general appearance of tlie country where the most violent 

 shocks took place was fearfully changed. 8o many farms were ruined 

 that our government gave to each landed proprietor a title to a sec- 

 tion (640 acres) of land in what was then known as the Boon Lick 

 country, on condition of proving their loss, and by relinquishing their 

 rights in the injured lands to government. 



In all grants of land to private individuals, although the laws regu- 

 lating such grants may be very stringent, cunning men can be found 

 who will find opportunity to evade these laws, and sucli was the case 

 undoubtedly in many of these old grants, but the actual sufferers were 



"The shocks felt in October, 1857, were the most violent in St. Louis, and seemed to 

 come from the soutii or southwest. In point of fact, seldom a year passes when these shocks 

 are not felt. Slight, indeed, they may be, as the inhabitants are so accustomed to them they 

 pay no regard to them, and it is only when the more violent are felt, and extend beyond these 

 earthquake regions, that any notice is taken of them. 



