The Nczv Madrid Eart/iqnakc. — Broadlicad. 79 
from Pittibnrgh and had tlieni stored in his cellar. During one of 
the shocks, the ground opened under the house and they were swal- 
lowed up and never afterwards seen. Near the St. Francis river there 
is a great deal of sunk land, caused by the earthquake of 181 1. Here 
are large trees submerged ten or twenty feet beneath the water. 
Previous to the earthquake keelboats would come up the St. Francis 
river and pass into the Mississippi three miles below New Madrid. 
The bayou is now dry land. From one of the fissures there was eject- 
ed the cranium of an extinct species of ox. In Reelfoot lake the fisher- 
man floats his canoe above the branching submerged tops of cypress 
trees. Reelfoot lake in Obion Co., Tennessee, nearly 20 miles long 
and seven broad owes its origin to the sinking of the ground during 
this period. 
Timothy Flint who at one time resided at St. Charles, 
Mo., and published in 1826 a book of "Recollections" was in 
this region about 1820 and furnishes a very graphic ac- 
count of the earthquake phenomena. 
Flint says that a tract near Little Prairie became covered with water 
three or four feet deep and when the water disappeared, there remained 
a stratum of sand. Lakes twenty miles in extent "'ere formed in the 
course of an hour while others were drained. The grave-yard of New 
Madrid was precipitated into the stream and most of the houses thrown 
down. The whole country between the mouth of the Ohio and the St. 
Francis including a front of 300 miles was convulsed to such a degree 
as to create lakes and islands and to cover a tract of many miles ex- 
tent near Little Prairie with water three or four feet deep, and when 
the water disappeared a stratum of sand remained. Birds lost all pow- 
er to fly and retreated to the neighborhood of man. A few persons 
sank in the chasms but were extricated. Trees were cut so as to fall 
across the chasms and on these the people would rest. Many persons 
perished with their boats upon the river. There were many ^shocks 
but two series of concussions were particularly terrible. There were 
two classes of shocks: those in which the motion was horizontal, and 
those in which it was perpendicular. The latter were attended with 
explosions and the terrible mixture of noises that preceded and ac- 
companied the earthquakes in a louder degree, but were by no means 
so desolating an^ destructive as the other. In the interval of earth- 
quakes, there was one evening — and that a brilliant and cloudless one 
— in which the western sky was a continual glare of vivid flashes of 
lightning and of repeated peals of subterranean thunder, seeming to 
proceed, as the flashes did, from below the horizon. This is said to be 
the same night on which the earthquake was so severe at Caraccas, 
and these flashes and that event were part of the same scene. 
Switzler's History of ^Missouri atid Campbell's Gazetteer, 
both contain full information derived from Godfrey Lc Sieur. 
an old inhabitant of New Madrid county. 
He says that the first shock came at 2 A. M., Dec. 16, 181 1, and was 
so severe that big houses and chimneys were shaken down and at half 
