270 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1926 
been infrequent within recent times, or since newspapers and the 
telegraph have been widely distributed, is, however, evident from 
compilations made by Rockwood.” In the State of Michigan alone 
within this period some 10 earthquakes have been put on record, the 
latest of which occured February 28, 1925.°° Contrary to general 
opinion earthquakes of devastating violence have also visited the 
region of the eastern United States. These greater earthquakes have 
seemed to have relation especially to the drainage basin of the St. 
Lawrence River and Great Lakes, to the lower Mississippi region 
of heavy deposition, or to the coastal plain east of the Appalachian 
Mountains. Accounts made between 1610 and 1791 by the French 
Jesuit missionaries from within the area reacked by canoes about the 
St. Lawrence River and lakes, show that earthquakes were felt within 
that region in 1638, 1661, 1663, 1664, 1665, 1668, and 1672; that of 
February 5, 1663, described in the letters of Jerome Lallemant hay- 
ing been of devastating violence and probably comparable to the 
greatest earthquakes that are known. The full accounts of the mis- 
sionaries translated and edited under the direction of the late Reuben 
G. Thwaites and published in 73 volumes by Burrows Bros., of 
Cleveland, have been searched for earthquake data and the extracted 
results published by Rev. Father Odenbach, of Cleveland.** 
In 1811 within the lower Mississippi Valley a really great earth- 
quake generally referred to as the New Madrid earthquake was 
felt over a relatively broad area of the Mississippi Valley. For 
more than a century the region has now been generally quiet, 
but the scars of the disastrous disturbances of 1811 still arrest the 
attention, and this earthquake must be reckoned among the most 
severe of any that have been anywhere recorded.*® 
The Charleston earthquake of 1886, while of greatest intensity 
in the vicinity of that Southern city, was felt as far north as the 
City of New York.*° All three of these great disturbances of the 
eastern United States were within areas far outside the seismic 
girdles which mark the earth’s zones of special instability. 
If we look upon the earthquake of the late seventeenth century 
within and about the St. Lawrence drainage basin as more or less 
completely relieving the strains which had quietly been accumulat- 
ing within that area, and much less completely relieving the outside 
=C. G. Rockwood, 14 articles in Am. Journ. Sci., from 1872 to 18835. 
23 W. H. Hobbs, ‘“‘ Earthquakes in Michigan,’ Pub. 5 (Geol. Ser. 3), Mich. Geol. and Biol. 
Survy., Lansing, 1911, pp. 69-ST, 2 pls. 
* Twelfth Ann. Rept. Meteorol. Obsery., Coll. St. Ignatius at Cleveland, Ohio, 1906-7, 
pp. 7-15. For an abridged summary see the author’s ‘“ Earthquakes,” Appleton, 1907, 
pp. 315-320. Lawson seems to be quite unaware of this earthquake (Bull. Seis. Soe. Am., 
p. 189; reprints indicate no volume or date). 
*% Myron L. Fuller, ‘The New Madrid earthquake,” Bull. 494, U. S. Geol. Sury., 1912, 
pp. 119, pls. 10, figs. 18. 
%C. E. Dutton, “The Charleston earthquake of Aug. 31, 1886,"" Ninth Ann. Rept. 
U. S. Geol. Surv., 1889, pp. 2038-528. 
