CHAP. XXXIII.] &quot; SUNK COUNTRY.&quot; 237 



eighty miles north and south, and thirty miles east 

 and west. A trapper, who had been hunting on 

 the Little Kiver, told me, that large spaces there were 

 obviously under water, owing to the great shake, 

 because the dead trees were still standing. In the 

 true hunter spirit, he regarded the awful catastrophe 

 of 1811-12 as a blessing to the country, and ex 

 patiated with delight on the vast area turned into 

 lake and marsh, and the active trade carried on ever 

 since in the furs of wild animals. It had been the 

 making of New Madrid, he affirmed, which would 

 become a rival of St. Louis, and exported even now 

 at least half as many peltries. There had been taken 

 last year 50,000 racoon skins, and 25,000 musk-rats 

 for making hats and caps; 12,000 mink for trimming 

 dresses; 1000 bears and 1000 otters ; 2500 wild cats, 

 40 panthers, and 100 wolves. Beavers there were 

 none, or only five or six had been trapped. He had 

 gone in his canoe, which carried his hut, his gun, 

 and his baggage, over the whole sunk country, and 

 described to me the villages or hummocks built 

 in the swamps by the musk-rats, which he called 

 &quot;French settlements,&quot; a piece of impertinence in 

 which the Anglo-Americans indulge towards the 

 Creoles of Louisiana. He told me that within the 

 area of the sunk country in Arkansas, about eighty 

 miles from New Madrid, is a space called Buffalo 

 Island, containing about twenty-five square miles, 

 where, two years ago, (1844,) a herd of buffaloes, 

 300 or 400 strong, was surprised, and six of them 

 taken. 



The sunk country is not confined to the region 



