Hocky Mountains. 327 



the Mexican gulf, was simultaneous with the agitations of 

 the earth so severely felt at New Madrid, Cape Girardeau, 

 the rapids of the Ohio,* and among the Otoes and other 

 tribes on the Missouri, f At the time of the appearance of 

 a new island, which was called Sabrina, in the volcanic 

 group of the Azores, the smaller West India Islands, though 

 at the distance of several hundred leagues, experienced fre- 

 quent earthquakes. More than two hundred shocks were 

 felt, from May 1811 to April 1812, in the island of St. 

 Vincent. This was the time of those incessant agitations 

 in the valley of the Mississippi, the Ohio, and the Arkansa, 

 and in all the western parts of the United States. 



It has been repeatedly asserted, that volcanic appearances 

 exist in the mountainous country between Cape Girardeau, 

 and the Hot Springs of the Washita, particularly at the lat- 

 ter place; but our observation has not tended to confirm 

 these accounts, and Hunter and Dunbar, who spent some 

 time at the Hot Springs, confidently deny the existence of 

 any such appearances in that quarter. Reports have been 

 often circulated, principally on the authority of hunters, of 

 explosions, subterranean fires, blowings and bellowings of 

 the mountains, and many other singular phenomena, said to 

 exist on the Little Missouri of Washita, and in other parts of 

 the region of the Hot Springs; but it is easy to see that 

 the combustion of a coal bed, or something of equal in- 

 significance, may have afforded all the foundation on which 

 these reports ever rested. But though no traces of existing 

 or of extinct volcanoes, should be found in any part of the 

 country affected by these earthquakes, it is not, therefore, 

 necessary, to go in search of causes like those which, in 

 other parts of the earth, are believed to produce similar 

 effects. 



On the morning following the earthquake above men- 



* Bradbury's Tiavels, p. 208. 2d. Edit, 

 f See p. 272. vol. 1. of this work. 



