;8 The American Geologist. August. 1002. 
town evidently settled down fifteen feet, but a h^lf mile below the 
town there does not seem to be any alteraton in the river bank, but a 
little way back, the numerous large ponds which covered a large part 
of the country were nearly dried up. The beds of some of them were 
elevated above their former banks several feet, producing an altera- 
tion of ten to twenty feet from the horizontal surface. A lake on the 
opposite side of the Mississippi has been formed over 100 miles long, 
six miles wide and ten to fifty feet deep. 
Since 181 1 slight shocks are occasionally felt. It is seldom more 
than a week but one is felt and sometimes two or three in a day. Dur- 
ing the past winter two occurred which were more severe than any 
felt for two years before, but others were but slight. Formerly severe 
thunder was often heard, but for more than twelve months before the 
earthquake there was none felt, and but little since, and much of it 
resembled subterranean thunder. 
Dow says that the vibration of the earth shook down trees, 
and thousands of willows were swept off like pipe stems, 
about waist high ; the swamps became high ground, and high 
land became low ground and two islands in the river were so 
shaken that they were washed away and disappeared. 
Prof. J. W. Foster in his Physical Geography of the 
Mississippi valley furnishes us with much interesting infor- 
mation concerning the New Aladrid earthquake, as follows : 
The series of shocks began near the close of 'Sii and continued 
until 1813. The telluric activity of which these events were a part 
extended over half the hemisphere and was manifested in a series of 
stupendous phenomena such as the elevation of Sr^:irina, one of the 
Azores, to the hight of 320 feet above the sea. The city of Caraccab 
with its 12,000 inhabitants was destroyed, an eruption of a ('olcano 
of St. Vincent, and fearful noises on the Llanois of Calabazo. 
New Madrid seems to have been one of the foci of disturbance, and 
shocks were repeated almost every hour for months in succession. Mr. 
A. N. Dillard, of New Madrid, gave Mr. Foster much information. 
The weather had been warm and pleasant, the air was hazy like Indian 
summer. About midnight, while the French population were engaged 
in dancing the first shock came, and houses and fences were shaken 
down. The greatest consternation prevailed, and the people rushed out 
and Protestant and Catholic knelt side by side and offered up solemn 
supplications. The shocks were stated to continue for 20 to 30 months. 
In every instance the motion was from the west or southwest. Fis- 
sures would be formed 6co to 700 feet long and 20 to 30 feet wide 
through which water and sand spouted 40 feet high. There issued 
no burning flames but flashes such as would result from an explosion 
of gas. or from passmg of electricity from cloud to cloud. Oak trees 
would be split in the center and for 40 feet up the trunk, one part 
standing on one side of a fissure, the other part on the other. Mr. 
Dillard says that his grandfather had received a boat-load of castings 
