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Notice of Earthquakes on the Mississippi. By Mr Flint. 



Fkom all the accounts, corrected one by another, and compa- 

 red with the very imperfect narratives that were published, says 

 Mr Flint, I infer that the shock of these earthquakes, in the 

 immediate vicinity of the centre of 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 settled. The houses fortunately were frail 

 and of logs, the most difficult to overturn that could be con- 

 structed. 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 bed of the stream. 

 Most of the houses were thrown down. Large Jakes, 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 disap- 

 peared, a stratum of sand, of the same thickness, was left in its 

 place. The trees spUt 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 ho- 

 rizon. 



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 pitcoal were dis- 

 charged, as high as the tops of the trees. I have seen a hun- 

 dred of these chasms, which remained fearfully deep, although 

 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. 



