On the Earthquakes of North- America. 63 



learned, that the Indian inhabitants residing in that 

 part of the western country where the horizontal 

 strata most abound Con the waters of the Ohio, &c), 

 though many of these tribes were known to have 

 resided in the country, for a very considerable pe- 

 riod of time, preserved no memorials of the exis- 

 tence of earthquakes in their country, and had even 

 no word for the phenomenon in their languages ; 

 " while (to use Mr. Volney's words) equivalent terms 

 are common and familiar in the dialects of the east." 



I now thought it highly probable, that it would be 

 easy to explain the difference in the disposition of 

 the eastern and the western strata, by calling to our 

 aid the courses of the American earthquakes. I even 

 composed an extensive memoir on the subject, which 

 was shown to the late Mr. Rittenhouse, Mr. Volney, 

 and other gentlemen. 



I should hardly have thought it worth noticing, in 

 this place, the primordia of this theory, if I did not 

 now possess facts, which convince me, that it is en- 

 tirely unfounded. I cannot, at present, attempt to 

 point out the feeble parts of this system. This will 

 be done, at large, in another place. It will be suffi- 

 cient to observe here, that earthquakes can be shown 

 to have pervaded many of those parts of the continent, 

 in which the horizontal arrangement of the strata is 

 almost an universal feature of the country. 



Of these western earthquakes I shally slightly notice 

 two, in this place. 



