The New Madrid Earthquake. — Broadhcad. 8i 
shake, Mrs. C. started to go to the well for water and to the 
smoke house for meat for breakfast, but behold neither could 
be found. Upon examination they were seen across the 
river on the opposite side from where the}- were the evening 
previous. Gen. Rozier, in his history of the settlement of the 
Mississippi valley, refers to Godfrey LeSieur's account, also 
quotes from Henry Howe of the Great West. He speaks of 
the trees waving, the sinking ground and the lightning 
flashings, rendering all very horrible. 
After the severest shocks a dense black cloud of vapor over- 
shadowed the land. The sulphur gases escaping through the 
cracks, the air became tainted and the water for 150 miles 
was so impregnated as to render it unfit to use. 
Long in his Expedition to the Rocky ^Mountains speaks of 
the countr}' between 50 degrees and 45 degrees north lat- 
itude limited by the Azores, the Alleghenies, the Green 
mountains of A'ermont, the valley of the ^Missouri, the Cor- 
dilleras of New Grenada, the coast of Venezuela, the vol- 
canoes of the smaller West Indies, all shaken at the same 
time. The destruction of Caraccas was simultaneous with 
the earth's agitation at New Madrid, on the Ohio and along 
the upper Missouri, where it occasioned superstitious dread 
among the Indians. They thought that the whites had ang- 
ered the great "Waconda" and he in his wrath caused the 
earth to shake. Earthquake shocks were felt from J\Iay, 
181 1, until April, 1812, in the island of St. Vincent of the 
West Indies. 
In 1820 eight years after the severe earthquake, passen- 
gers from a steamboat went ashore at New Madrid and while 
examining a collection of books, they felt the house shake and 
they became frightened. "Don't be alarmed," said the lady 
of the house, "it is nothing but an earthquake." These con- 
cussions were occasionally felt from Red river to the falls of 
the Ohio. While major Long was at Cape Giradeau on the 
9ch of November, 1820, a shock was felt sufficient to cause 
considerable motion of furniture. 
Annals of the West, published in St. Louis 1851, has a full 
a( count of the earthquake phenomena, chiefly derived from 
Dr. Hildreth,. Dr. Lewis F. Linn in Wetmore's Gazetteer of 
Missouri, and from Drake's ])ictures of Cincinnati. 
