366 hitelligence and Miscellanies. 



9. Earthquakes on the Mississippi ; extracted from the 

 travels of Mr. Flint. 



" From all the accounts, corrected one by another, and 

 compared with the very imperfect narratives that were pub- 

 lished, I infer that the shock of these earthquakes, in the im- 

 mediate vicinity of the center of their course, must have 

 equalled in their terrible heavings of the earth, any thing of 

 the kind that has been recorded. I do not believe that the 

 public have ever yet had any adequate idea of the violence 

 of the concussions. We are accustomed to measure this, 

 by the buildings overturned, and the mortality that results. 

 Here the country was thinly settled. The houses fortunate- 

 ly were frail and of logs, the most difficult to overturn that 

 could be constructed. Yet as it was, whole tracts were 

 plunged into the bed of the river. The grave-yard at New 

 Madrid, with all its sleeping tenants, was precipitated into 

 the bend of the stream. Most of the houses were thrown 

 down. Large lakes of twenty miles in extent were made in 

 an hour; other lakes were drained. The whole country to 

 the mouth of the Ohio in one direction, and to the St. Fran- 

 cis in the other, including a front of three hundred miles, 

 was convulsed to such a degree as to create lakes and isl- 

 ands, the number of which is not yet known, — to cover a 

 tract of many miles in extent near the Little Prairie, with wa- 

 ter three or four feet deep; and when the water disappear- 

 ed, a stratum of sand of the same thickness was left in its 

 place. The trees split in the midst, lashed one with anoth* 

 er, and are still visible over great tracts of country, inclining 

 in every direction, and at every angle to the earth and to the 

 horizon. 



They described the undulations of the earth as resembling 

 waves, increasing in elevation as they advanced, and when 

 they had attained a certain fearful height, the earth would 

 burst, and vast volumes of water and sand and pit-coal were 

 discharged, as high as the tops of the trees. I have seen a 

 hundred of these chasms which remained fearfully deep, al- 

 though in a very tender alluvial soil, and after a lapse of 

 seven years. Whole districts were covered with white sand, 

 so as to become uninhabitable. 



The water at first covered the whole country, particularly 

 at the Little Prairie ; and it must have been indeed a scene 

 of horror, in these deep forests, and in the gloom of the dark- 

 est night, and by wading in the water to the middle, to fly 



