CHAPTER XXXIII. 



Bluffs at Memphis. New Madrid. No Inn. Undermining of River Bank. 

 Examination of Country shaken by Earthquake of 1811-12. Effects 

 of Passage of Waves through Alluvial Soil. Circular Cavities or Sand- 

 Bursts. Open Fissures. Lake Eulalie drained by Shocks. Borders of 

 Sunk Country, west of New Madrid. Dead Trees standing erect. A 

 slight Shock felt. Trade in Peltries increased by Earthquake. Trees 

 erect in new-formed Lakes. Indian Tradition of Shocks. Dreary Forest 

 Scene. Rough Quarters. Slavery in Missouri. 



March 24, 1816. AT length we reached Memphis, in the 

 State of Tennessee. The town on which this ancient and vener 

 able name is conferred, appears the newest of the large places 

 we have yet seen on the Mississippi. It is growing with great 

 rapidity, standing on a bluff now fifty-two feet above the level 

 of the water when the river is high. The cliff is the abrupt 

 termination of deposits similar to those of fresh-water origin, which 

 I have before alluded to at Natchez and Vicksburg. A mass of 

 yellow loarn, forty feet thick, reposes on sand with quartz pebbles, 

 which rests on clay, not visible at the time of my visit. Such a 

 site for a town, in spite of the slow undermining of the cliffs, is 

 permanent by comparison with the ordinary banks of the river 

 for hundreds of miles continuously ; for, as a general rule, the 

 stream in the alluvial plain is either encroaching a foot or more 

 annually, so as to wash away buildings, if there be any on the 

 bank, or is retreating, so that a port soon becomes an inland 

 town. The people of Memphis are ambitious that their city 

 should be a great naval arsenal, and there are considerable naval 

 stores here ; but as frigates require from eighteen to twenty- 

 three feet water, and men-of-war thirty feet, while the bar at 

 the mouth of the Mississippi affords at present no more than six 

 teen feet water, their hopes can riot be realized till a ship canal 

 is made from some point on the Mississippi to the Gulf of Mexico. 

 After we left Memphis, we were shown, on the Tennessee 



