290 MITCHILL ON THE EARTHQUAKES OF 1811, 1812, AND 1813. 



A letter from Kentucky to my friend, the hon. John Talliaferro, in- 

 formed him that on the night between the 15th and 16th December, 

 1811, the shock of an earthquake was sensibly and alarmingly felt. The 

 shakings continued, in greater or less degrees, through night and day, 

 up to the 30th of the same month, when a more severe shock than any 

 preceding one occurred. It overturned almost every brick or stone 

 chimney in Henderson county, or the region thereof, situated on Green 

 river, down to its confluence with the Ohio. 



The editor of the Western Spy, a newspaper printed at Cincinnati, 

 in Ohio, after writing an intelligent account of the phenomena of the 

 earthquake, gave a valuable summary from the gazettes of the occur- 

 rences in other places along the western waters. 



By the intelligence from Detroit, from Judge James Witherell, it ap- 

 pears that Michigan was agitated by the same subterranean power. A 

 small shock was felt at Detroit on the 17th December. The atmos- 

 phere was serene, but cold. Thirty miles northwest of that village is 

 a lake about nine miles in circumference, of an oval form, and which 

 is supposed to have a communication under ground with Lake Sinclair. 

 In the centre of this small lake there is an island of perhaps three miles 

 in circumference, inhabited only by Indians. They relate, that on the 

 said 17th December the waters of the lake appeared to tremble, and 

 boil like a great pot over a hot fire ; and immediately a vast number of 

 large tortoises rose to the surface, and swam rapidly to the shore, 

 where they were taken for food. 



The testimony of Colonel Samuel Hammond, in a letter of the 6th 

 February, 1812, which I received from him, was to the following effect. 

 He confined himself strictly to what he knew from personal observation. 

 The first shock he witnassed was on the ffth of December last. He 

 was then at Herculaneum in Louisiana. A few seconds before the 

 motion was felt, he and others heard a considerable roaring or rumbling 



