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



been convulsed. The earthquakes appeared to affect very sensibly 

 both the body and mind of human beings. In some instances, where 

 individuals had been deprived of their usual sleep, through fear of 

 being ingulfed in the earth, their stomachs were troubled with nausea, 

 and sometimes even with vomiting. Others complained of debility, 

 tremor, and pain in the knees and legs. The shocks seemed to produce 

 effects resembling those of electricity. We have had a very wet 

 spring, summer, and autumn, with a loaded atmosphere; and I have no 

 doubt much impregnated with sulphureous particles. Sickness was 

 much more prevalent last winter, spring, summer, and fall, than ever 

 was known in this country; and, no doubt, the state of the atmosphere 

 was the principal cause." 



Nor had those subterranean tumults ceased at the close of 1813. 

 For two shocks were felt at Russelville, on the 5th of December, one 

 at ten o'clock in the morning, and the other four in the afternoon. 



They were repeated in the Illinois Territory about the same time. 

 Stanley Griswold, Esq. gave an account of them in a short narrative of 

 December 18th. This was printed in the gazettes of the time. They 

 were particularly severe at the salt works belonging to the United 

 States; and but moderate at a short distance off. In the 16th volume 

 of the Medical Repository, p. 304, there are other sensible observations 

 of the same ingenious gentleman. 



And on the 29th of December Mr. Hempstead, the delegate in con- 

 gress from the Missouri Territory, moved for the consideration of a 

 proposition relative to an additional judge in that quarter. He said he 

 had been instructed by the legislature of the territory to bring the mea- 

 sure forward. The settlement of Arkansas, for which the new judge 

 was asked, was situated two hundred miles from New-Madrid, where the 

 courts were then held, and since the late earthquakes, the road had 

 "become so nearly impassable, that a circuit of three hundred miles was 



