238 TRADITION OF EARTHQUAKES. [CHAP. XXXIII. 



west of the Mississippi ; for, on my way up the river, 

 I learnt from Mr. Fletcher, a farmer, who had a 

 wooding station in Tennessee, that several extensive 

 forest tracts in that State were submerged during the 

 shocks of 1811-12, and have ever since formed 

 lakes and swamps, among which are those called 

 Obion and Reelfoot. He had observed, in several 

 of these, that trees which had been killed, and had 

 stood for a long time partially submerged, had 

 in many places rotted down to the water s edge. 

 In some swamps caused by the earthquake, they 

 had all decayed to within a few inches of the base of 

 the trunk. It is therefore evident, that should the 

 turbid waters of the Mississippi overflow that region, 

 and deposit their sediment on such stumps, they 

 would present to the geologist a precise counterpart 

 of the buried stools of trees with their roots before 

 described as occurring at the bottom of the bluff at 

 Port Hudson.* Mr. Fletcher also told me, that 

 he knew several fissures in Tennessee, formed in 

 1811-12, where the ground on one side of the rent 

 remained higher by two feet than that on the other 

 side. 



I was informed at New Madrid that the Indians, 

 before the year 1811, had a tradition of a great 

 earthquake which had previously devastated this same 

 region. Yet there is so wide an area of forest 

 without sink-holes or, any great inequalities of sur 

 face, and without dead trees like those above alluded 

 to, that we cannot suppose any convulsion of equal 



* Ante, pp. 177180. 



