Account of a Hurricane at Shelbyville, Tenn. 257 
locity. Not one individual without the range of the hurricane, heard 
the fall of the houses. The overturning of such a number of houses, 
ina calm time, would have produced a very loud sound. Still 
louder would be the sound of so many substances torn asunder, 
crushed and broken, and dashed to pieces. But no sound whatever 
was heard by those without the storm, if we except the shrill whistling 
of the wind, like a loud bugle high in the air. Those who were 
within one hundred feet of the falling houses did not hear them fall. 
Nay, we did not hear the fall of the trees, which were torn to pieces 
and piled around our house. We were not even aware of our dan- 
ger. Within doors we conversed, and were heard in the ordinary 
tones ; but we were unconscious of what was going on without, until 
informed by the arrival of fugitives from the awful scene. It was 
remarked, too, by persons in the falling houses, “‘ we heard nothing 
but the crash of our own house.” 
Another fact, which it is important to recollect, is, that it was ob- 
served that the corner of the house, on the first floor, next the wind, 
was the safest part of the building. Ina brick house, the cellar was 
a very unsafe place, because if the joists gave way the cellar was 
filled with the materials of the building. The side of the house op- 
posite the wind was very unsafe, because the materials of the build- 
ing were blown to that side. A small portion of the wall next the 
wind always stood. Brick houses were less safe than framed houses. 
They were more liable to be blown down, and their materials were 
more dangerous. A young man saved his life by creeping under a 
bench, which afterwards sustained a mass of many tons. Some were 
preserved by getting under their bedsteads. No place in the up- 
per story of a house was safe. The recollection of these facts may 
be useful to us, should we be so unhappy as to be exposed to a simi- 
lar catastrophe, though unfortunately at such a time we are not apt 
to recollect any thing, and are too liable to be deserted by our rea- 
son and presence of mind. 
P.S. An intelligent farmer, who lived on the high lands; eight 
miles south of Shelbyville, in a situation which commands a view of 
the hill on which that village is built, communicated to the writer a 
fact which is curious, and may throw some light upon the nature of 
the forces which produce the gyrations of hurricanes. He had risen 
about midnight to look out on the storm, his attention having been 
excited by the unusual brilliancy of the lightning, and the continu- 
ousness of its flashes. 'The heavens were overspread with dark 
Vou. XXXI.—No. 2. 33 
