8 



More than two hundred shocks were felt from 

 the month of May 1811, to April 1812, in the 

 island of St. Vincent ; one of the three where 

 there are still active volcanoes. The commotion 

 did not remain circumscribed to that insular 

 portion of eastern America. From the 16th of 

 December 1811, the earth was almost inces- 

 santly agitated in the valleys of the Missisippi, 

 the Arkansas, and the Ohio. The oscillations 

 were more feeble on the east of the Alleghanies, 

 than to the west of these mountains, in Ten- 

 nessee and Kentucky. They were accompanied 

 by a great subterraneous noise, coming from the 

 south-west. At the spots between New Madrid 

 and Little Prairie, as at the Saline, north of 

 Cincinnati, in latitude 37° 45', the shocks were 

 felt every day, nay almost every hour, during 

 several months. The whole of these phenomena 

 lasted from the 16th of December 1811, till the 

 year 1813. The commotion, confined at first to 

 the south, in the valley of the lower Missisippi, 

 appeared to advance slowly toward the north *. 



At the same period, when this long series of 

 earthquakes began in the Transalleghanian 

 States, in the month of December 1811, the 

 town of Caraccas felt the first shock in calm 



* See the interesting description of these earthquakes, 

 given by Mr. Mitchell, in the Trans, of the Liter, and Phil. Soc. 

 of New York, vol. i, p. 281—308; and by Mr. Drake, ia 

 the Nat. and Stat. View of Cincinnati, p. 232 -238. 



