Account of a Hurricane at Shelbyville, Tenn. 253 
bark still covers the prostrate trunk, the branches and tops of trees 
are still intertwined, and perhaps even the brown and decaying 
verdure of the leaves presents the appearance of a premature au- 
tumn ; the roads are stopped up and impassable; fences and farm 
houses have disappeared ; the corn, wheat and cotton lie flat upon 
the ground, as if a roller had passed over them ; in some places large 
piles of drift are seen heaped against a hill or rock, and the mud 
has settled upon and buried the vegetable productions of the earth. 
At other times you see merely the vestiges of an old hurricane. A 
new growth has sprung up in the woods, and you may remark the 
uniform size of the young trees, all dating their age from the same 
epoch. The bark has decayed away, and the large trunks of the 
fallen trees are covered with moss ; their limbs and tops have rotted 
and disappeared, and the roots are still distinguished by the mass of 
earth which was torn up with them, and is now settling down, and 
still by the uniformity of their position mark the exact course of the 
hurricane, the root always being towards the point of the compass 
from which the wind blew. In other places we may find the vesti- 
ges of still more ancient date. The process of decay has been 
completed: even the trunks of the fallen forest have disappeared, a 
tall, rich, and luxuriant growth has again overspread the earth, and 
we can only read the history of former devastations in the numerous 
hillocks of yellow, upturned earth, left by the roots of trees, which, 
after being blown down, have entirely disappeared and mingled with 
the rich, black soil in which they had grown. The tracks of these 
hurricanes are not often more than one hundred rods wide, and vary 
from a mile to twenty or thirty in length. You can never tell from the 
direction in which the trees have fallen, the general course of the 
hurricane. This'is usually from southwest to northeast, but though 
the trees at any particular spot lie parallel to each other, their di- 
rection varies very much at different places of the same track. At 
one place they have fallen with their tops to the north, at another 
they have fallen towards the south, and at another to the east or 
west. This fact strengthens the theory of Mr. Redfield, which as- 
cribes to winds, storms and tempests a gyral form. 
It will be remembered by those who have read Mr. Redfield’s 
very ingenious essays, that he suggests the theory that the storms 
which visit our coast rise on the Gulf of Mexico, and assuming a 
gyral motion, sweep over the United States from the southwest. to 
the northeast. It is known to all who have resided in the great Val- 
