Account of a Hurricane at Shelbyville, Tenn. 257 



loclty. Not one individual without the range of the hurricane, heard 

 the fall of the houses. The overturning of such a number of houses, 

 in a 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. In a 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 



Vol. XXXI.— No. 2. 33 



