108 



EARTHQUAKES IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. [Cii. XXVIII 



New 



Mississ 



reflux of its waves. The motion 



some 



shocks 



IS 



described as having been horizontal, and of others perpen- 

 dicular; and the vertical movement is said to have been 

 much less desolatii 



The above account has been reprinted exactly as it 

 ap23eared in former editions of this work, compiled from the 

 authorities which I have cited; but having more recenth 

 (March, 1846) had an opportunity m 



r 



Missis 



eye-witnesses of the catastrophe, I am able to confirm the 



some remai 



Lid 



features of the county. I skirted, as was 

 before related (Vol. I. p. 456), part of the territory immediately 

 Avest of New Madrid, called '^the sunk country,' which was 

 for the first time permanently submerged during the earth- 

 quake of 1811-12. It is said to extend alonor the course of 



White Water 



70 and 80 miles north and south, and 80 miles east and west. 

 I saw on its border many full-grown trees still standino^ 

 leafless, the bottoms of their trunks several feet under water, 

 and a still greater number lying prostrate. An active vege- 

 tation of aquatic plants is already beginning to fill up some 

 of the shallows, and the sediment washed in by occasional 

 floods when the Mississippi rises to an extraordinary height 

 contributes to convert the borders of the sunk reo-ion into 

 marsh and forest land. Even on the drj ground along tlie 

 confines of the submerged area, I observed in some jDlaces 

 that all the trees of prior date to 1811 were dead and leafless, 



They are supposed to 

 have been killed by the loosening of their roots during the 



though standing erect and entire. 



repeated undulations which passed through the ground for 

 three months in succession. 



Mr. Bringier, an experienced engineer of New Orleans, who 



was on horseback near New Madrid when some of the 

 severest shocks were experienced, related to me (in 1846), 

 that ' as the waves advanced the trees bent down, and the 

 instant afterwards, while recovering their position, thej often 



I 



